


August

by Red



Series: August (and after) [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Abortion, Activism, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anal Sex, Big Mutant Family, Canon Disabled Character, Childbirth, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Established Relationship, Genetics, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Married Couple, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Mpreg, Mutant Rights, Postpartum Depression, Pregnant Sex, Unconventional Families, Unplanned Pregnancy, mind the trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 00:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the XMFC kinkmeme, in response to a prompt asking for an mpreg story with some genetics thrown in the mix. While non-mutant couples may be able to conceive a mutant or a non-mutant child, for a couple with two mutants, there's a twenty-five percent chance of a third option: a fatal presentation of the mutant gene. Erik found out years ago that he was one of a number of (relatively cisgendered? this is an odd thing for me to be typing) mutant guys who have the secondary mutation of A Uterus. He'd also been told--years ago, but less so than the last statement--that he was infertile. He and Charles have been on the waiting list for adopting a mutant kid, but when morning sickness sets in, Erik can't exactly celebrate his sudden ability to get pregnant until he's ruled out that twenty-five percent chance. </p><p>Cue hiding a pregnancy from a telepath husband, dealing with Dr. MacTaggert's meddling, and trying to avoid the relentless well-wishing of the police department's esteemed Mutant Affairs Division.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).



> Thank you to Unforgotten for the prompt, to everyone who commented and supported me on the meme, and a huge thank you to nagasasu for the beta!
> 
> For a better explanation of the genetics involved, [here is an anonymous person on the meme](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6192.html?thread=8291888#t8291888) explaining it better than I could ever manage.

It's Saturday morning, and Erik's flushing sick down the toilet.

Again.

Splashing water up on his face, he glares into the mirror.

It's the same face he's used to, the same functional form he's seen in this same mirror each of the hundreds of days he's lived in this flat. A little more exhausted, perhaps. A little more sallow. He tilts his head, considering. More puffy? Is that weight he's putting on, or--

The knock on the bathroom door is tentative, but Erik jumps all the same. Despite the fact that he's living with a telepath, he somehow thought he would go on avoiding this moment. It's been weeks now that he's successfully hidden these early-morning bouts of illness from everyone. That is, everyone save the cat.

"Erik? Darling?"

The other tenant of the apartment, and--considering the state of Erik's abdomen--the other guilty party in this impossible _situation_. 

It shouldn't even be an option, Erik thinks. He isn't even capable of this. Not any longer, that is; and he'd told Charles that the very moment he'd brought up kids. Test after test had shown the same thing.

_Excessive scar tissue. Inoperable._

Infertile.

It had been convenient enough in the beginning. When they were first dating--Erik a rookie working petty theft cases and Charles in residency--it had been difficult enough to remember to feed themselves, much less an infant.

Now, from the hall, there's a wave of concern so strong it's palpable. Erik shields his thoughts.

"Darling? Please, if something is wrong--"

Hastily, Erik opens the door. The cat, no doubt still sulking from her insulin shot (and only Charles would bring home a diabetic cat) uses the moment to bolt into the bathroom, her customary safehouse in the mornings.

Charles still has a hand raised, awkwardly, to knock again.

And then Charles beams, ridiculous and bright. As if Erik had just come back from being lost for years in some distant war, rather than opening the door after monopolizing the bathroom in a three-bedroom apartment for approximately one hour. 

It was exactly that expression, Erik thinks, that made him ask an upper-class grad student with astonishingly naive opinions on human-mutant relations out for a drink in the first place. He smiles back, and hopes it isn't too wan. Charles gestures him down, and with a little reluctance, Erik settles in a low crouch against Charles's chair.

He's not at all surprised when Charles brushes over his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Aren't you the one always insisting the difference between PhD and MD?" Erik grouses. Though he stays crouched by the chair, he impatiently brushes away Charles's hand. Erik has never done well with doting.

"Regardless, I'm quite certain I have the credentials to tell if you've a fever, Erik. Which it doesn't seem you do. All the same--"

"All the same, it's probably just something I ate," Erik interrrupts, leaning tiredly back against the bathroom counter. A likely enough excuse--every Friday night, Charles's little sister and Irene show up, and sometimes everyone has to suffer the fate of Raven's vague-at-best attempts at cooking.

"But I'll call in."

It's a risky move. He could as easily invoke Charles's suspicion with this, and sure enough Charles frowns. Erik carefully thinks only of last night's dinner, of the nausea still roiling in his stomach. For good measure, he thinks of how dull the caseload's been and how insufferable his new rookie partner in the mutant division gets when she hasn't an excuse to fling bones at someone; he covers up every worry with _haven't taken a day since--_. 

They've been together years, and his old hesitation at having Charles about in his brain has largely vanished. He's still learned a few tricks--most of them used whenever he's stuck talking to that private investigator, Frost--to deal with telepaths during that time.

Charles smiles, slightly. Erik tries not to worry if the smile seems forced or reluctant, and he lets his mind dwell only on how rotten he feels. Eventually Charles leans forward a little, brushing his fingers over the back of Erik's hand. "You must really feel quite poor, my friend," he says. "You haven't taken a sick day since 2007." 

As if he didn't remember--his partner at the time may have had impressive healing abilities, but he still apparently could carry a mild enough case of chicken pox to infect the whole damn department without having so much as a sniffle. He'd been laid up for days, with Charles attempting (with variable success) to invent a telepathic cure for itching. 

"I'll bribe Irene to tell us when Raven's about to feel adventurous. We'll order out," Charles adds, letting his hand slide up Erik's shoulder and rub at the base of his neck. Some of the queasiness dissipates.

"I've a full day, I'm afraid," he says, hand withdrawing all too soon. It's quite the understatement. Early Saturday mornings are always Charles's busiest, most mutants being forced into underpaid jobs where they could hardly ask a day off for something as frivolous as psychotherapy.

"I'll keep my cell on. You'll call, should you feel any worse?"

Erik nods. And backs away, hurriedly, when Charles leans in to try for a kiss. 

" _Charles,_ " he hisses, scandalized. He stands, grabbing for his toothbrush, and manages to suppress a grin at the point Charles makes about that never bothering Erik before, when Charles was still an irresponsible college student. 

Charles lingers, nearly long enough to be late to his office. Feeling more steady with the taste of last night's curry out of his mouth, Erik walks with him to the door. Erik's accustomed to being the first out of the apartment in the mornings, so he feels absurdly domestic as he slouches--still in a worn t-shirt and flannel bottoms, his one concession to the winter--in the doorway. He smirks as Charles makes it almost to the end of the hall before turning back and waves off Charles's final warning to consider calling the paramedics should Erik start _actively_ dying.

He waits until he feels the keys in Charles's pocket and the frame of Charles's chair go distant enough he can't feel them. He waits longer for the distant subterranean hum of a subway train to escape the reaches of his powers.

And before he begins paging through his contacts for Moira's cell, he steps into the spare room. The apartment they've shared these past four years is a three-bedroom: their room, Charles's home office, and this. This, a room stacked haphazardly with boxes and books and uncomfortable furniture they're always about to donate. 

It's not what Charles had hoped for this room when they got the place.

Much as Charles tends to put on a brave face for these things, Erik knew he'd been disappointed when he had first seen the test results.

Well, there are options, Charles had said. His smile had been brilliant, soft with understanding. Erik kissed him, then, and said yes, and with the help of one of the guys in legal who knew a bit about that sort of thing, he'd got together the proper phone numbers and forms.

They've been on the list for three years, now. Erik had known beforehand that most adoption organizations have no interest with mutant couples at all. Of the few that would work with a potential mutant parent, half of them are run by religious groups that are--as Erik had also said often enough to anyone who'd listen--less than enthused at the fathering abilities of a queer mutant-separatist Jew.

He can safely admit that this is something he wants. It's not just Charles who finds the spare room stark and empty. For a short moment he lets the uneasy feeling in his gut give him hope.

But he's been through enough, now, to know not to ever let his hopes up. After all, though it's unlikely Raven's chicken curry is to blame, it could still be the flu.

He dials Moira.

Or it could be he's pregnant.

His hand tightens as he listens to the ring tone.

Could be he's pregnant, and it'll only end like that time when he'd not wanted it. When he'd sat, fifteen years old and terrified in a poorly-run public health office in Dusseldorf, and learned for the first time that he had a not-entirely-uncommon secondary mutation. When he learned he was pregnant.

When he learned the fetus wasn't viable, that (though they weren't sure, then, of the genetics behind it) it seemed twenty-five percent of mutant-with-mutant pregnancies resulted in miscarriage.

The phone continues to ring.

_But you're young,_ the human doctor had said, not even bothering to look up from a thick stack of paperwork, _you'll have other chances._

If it happens again, he thinks, it'll be better. There are more sophisticated tests for this; he can catch it earlier. Obviously, he can't get Charles's hopes up before he knows for certain.

But even if he has to make the same decision, and even if he still needs to make it alone, perhaps it will be easier. He's thirty-six. He's with a man who astonishes him daily with his effortless kindness.

He won't be holding the hand of a underpaid mutant nurse, trying to settle the rattling of speculums and trays. He won't be shaking his head when he's asked, softly, if he has someone to pick him up after the procedure, when he's asked if he's somewhere safe to go.

Moira picks up on the sixth ring. She sounds surprised to hear from him, and rightfully so. Though she may be a close friend from Charles's undergrad days, he's always been wary of doctors and humans.

He focuses on the distinct hum of his wedding band, and asks if Moira's able to pencil him in.

At the least, he thinks, he won't be having an ultrasound of a nonviable fetus be the thing to tell him his foster father is actually a mutant.


	2. Chapter 2

When he'd left that office in Dusseldorf with a bottle of antibiotics, a week's supply of painkillers, and a newfound knowledge of his basic anatomy, Erik had left with one more conviction about humans.

They were completely unqualified to work in mutant health. He'd spent most of his youth educating people on this simple, obvious fact, and even when he'd met Charles--who had determinedly stood up for this human he'd known since undergrad physiology courses--Erik had kept his ground. 

Naturally, he wound up on the couch for a week for saying, "perhaps she's qualified to treat sniffles in a pre-actualized eleven-year-old," but sometimes one must sacrifice for the sake of maintaining a moral high ground.

Which is why it still bristled, now, to be sitting in Dr. MacTaggert's waiting room. _Cozy and home-like,_ as the website described it. He's been here before, naturally: a few times with Charles over the years, twice when he'd given Irene a lift after work, and once when that asshole Logan gave him a final parting gift before leaving to work with the feds. He's often considered driving the company car halfway out of the city to the offices of the one mutant physician in town, but it hardly seems worth it. He's never sick, and rarely injured. Officer Erik Lensherr simply has little use for doctors.

Saturdays are Moira's busiest, too. Erik had hoped she'd say getting him in was absolutely impossible, but he's never been a lucky man. Instead he's here, waiting with a dozen-odd of Doctor MacTaggert's regular patients.

Even Erik has to admit the room is far warmer than that office in Dusseldorf: soft couches, drapes, thriving ivy and African violet and zizi plants. A small tote filled with wooden toys and board-books. There's even a fish tank, and Erik's not surprised to see Moira's receptionist idly harassing the bright-colored creatures.

He tries to flip through a copy of yesterday's paper, to ignore the surroundings and the racing of his nerves. The others in the office are quietly sniffling, texting, reading; there's nothing about this room that should be distracting.

All the same, Erik keeps glancing up at two pairs. A human-appearing mother with her arm around her clearly miserable school-aged son, his face pressed against her and his fur patchy and molted. A woman in gloves heavily pregnant in the far corner, glowering intermittently when the man beside her--visibly mutant, and no doubt the father--says something in French.

Apart from asking, there's little way for Erik to know that the woman in the young couple is mutant. But to be showing that much, he wonders--surely she's had the test? He flips idly through the business section, though he finds stock market figures as indecipherable and dull as Charles's old genetics texts.

Long ago, Erik lost his faith. He can remember the exact moment: he'd been holding his mother's hand while he waited for help.

He waited as she grew cold, for hours.

He finds himself bargaining with an a non-existent Being in a human physician's waiting room. _I would give anything,_ he thinks fervently, reaching down to brush his abdomen before turning the page again. _Please. Just let me share with Charles this one gift._

The human mother and her shedding son go back; the pregnant couple go and return beaming, the woman muttering in a Southern drawl, _about damn time this thing came out_.

And all too soon, a man in scrubs with a clipboard is standing in the short hall back to the exam rooms.

"Mr. Lensherr?"

Erik's privately quite pleased with himself as all the metal in the office remains stationary while he's weighed, while a thermometer is shoved in his mouth, while he gives a terse reply to the medical assistant's question of "and what would you say you were here for, Mr. Lensherr?"

"To see Dr. MacTaggert," he said, grinning with all his teeth. He wishes he'd known what he weighed last month. He also wishes he were anywhere but here. Like anyone else with any sort of preservation instinct, the assistant begins to back away. "If you require an exam of any sort, the gowns--" he begins, gesturing at a drawer before floundering utterly in the face of Erik's glare.

"Well, then," he stammered, "the doctor will be in shortly, sir." 

Erik nods, watching the assistant beat a hasty retreat. Reluctantly, he gives up his seat on the hydraulic stool and opens the drawer.

Folding his clothes neatly and stacking them in the room's sole chair, the office no longer feels quite so warm. Erik tugs the worn-cotton gown closer, and very seriously considers putting his pants back on and running for the exit. The crinkle of exam paper under his backside makes the steel lid to a jar of sterile swabs warp slightly.

It feels like time has stopped completely. Erik pages through old text messages, trying to stay calm. There's two from his partner this morning that he's already replied to: _Are you alive?_ and _Good, then I can kill you for abandoning me_. There's also one from Charles.

_Just got out of the tunnels, do hope you're still breathing. Call me at 12:30, if you're awake. I'll actually schedule myself a lunch. Much love._

He's in the process of inventing a reason to text Charles again when Moira taps twice on the door, and steps in. She's looking at the chart, at first--Erik isn't certain exactly what's on there, considering he's only been in to see her once before, and while he'd signed a disclosure to let her have his old records, he's never been forthcoming with filling out any forms--and she visibly startles when she sees he's in a gown.

"Erik," she says, "this is a surprise." She sets the chart aside, one of those practiced moves to pretend he's got her undivided attention.

"An unpleasant one, I assure you," he replies, gruffly. There's no need to play at civility, given that he and Moira have suffered each other for nearly a decade.

"I can see that." She sits, straightens her lab coat. She's dressed casually under it--trousers, sneakers, t-shirt. It's the sort of thing Charles does, too. _I'll have you know weekend casual puts most people at ease_ , he'd transmitted once, pouting when Erik had silently wondered on the professionalism of a corduroy jacket over a t-shirt that proclaimed "I love Adobo," particularly when the word "love" was represented by a stylized rooster. 

Knowing someone's trying to put him at ease makes Erik immediately--willfully--on edge.

Moira sighs.

"Do I even want to know what Charles threatened you with, for you to even be in here without multiple bullet holes?"

"With all due respect, Doctor MacTaggert--"

"Moira, please. Erik, we've only known each other for--"

"--Moira. With all due respect, in the unlikely eventuality I were to become a gunshot victim, the department would not take me to a general practitioner."

Seeing Moira grit her teeth puts Erik in a slightly better mood, at least.

"Yes, well. Thank you for your unwavering faith in my clinical skills."

"Naturally," Erik replies with a smirk. He's feeling markedly better. Perhaps the last three weeks have merely been a fluke.

He glances away from Moira's unnerving state. Sometimes, he wonders if basic telepathy wasn't just another course in Moira and Charles's undergrad program.

"Now that we've successfully reestablished our mutual trust, would you like to tell me why you're here?" The _particularly why you're here half-naked in a drafty exam gown_ is more than implied.

Erik looks at his hands, at the dark band of titanium and tungsten he'd made six years ago.

"Moira," he says, soft enough that she leans forward slightly. "Can I trust you?"

She blinks. "Of course," she says, automatically.

He looks at her, appraising. She meets his eyes.

"This is about Charles." It's not a question.

"Yes. Partially." He laughs, and it's not a happy sound. "You could say it's about halfway about him, at any rate."

She nods, slightly. "You know professional code, Erik. You know there's some cases where I would be legally required to divulge information to another provider. I may not exactly _like_ you, Erik, but I know you. I think I can safely say you're not planning to shove Charles down a flight of stairs for the insurance money or gone catting around and picked up something that would put his health at risk."

Though they've never got along, Erik has always respected Moira; and now's no different, as she resolutely ignores the threatening rattle of metal around her.

"You are currently my patient, Erik. I can safely say that whatever you're about to say to me--whatever's going on with you right now--will stay strictly between us."

She's right, of course--Erik knows professional code fully well, and human general practitioner or not, Moira is nothing if not a professional. It still helps to actually hear her say it, that he can trust her to do this test and keep the results between them.

"I trust you know something of my medical history," he begins.

"What little I can gather from our one visit and a few incomplete public health documents written in a language I can't even read," she grouses. Her smile is a little sad. "But yes, Erik."

When he had been in with the chicken pox, a distraught Charles at his side, she'd talked him in to letting her run "a few new tests." He had been through the whole sequence right before he'd joined the force--he'd needed a physical for the job, anyway--but Moira said there were a few new scans she could run. And that she wanted to do them while she had Erik captive.

Which was how Erik had found himself covered in pox _and_ with an ass full of contrast dye, but Charles had never looked more hopeful. 

"I've been more sensitive to smells, lately," he admits. "I've been having nausea early in the morning for the last few weeks. I'm not sure if I've gained any weight."

Moira's expression was slowly brightening. "Morning sickness is usually an early development, Erik. The first trimester usually only has you putting on three pounds or so, hardly anything noticeable. Erik, this is fantastic, why--"

"You were the one who begged me to submit to 'one more test,' Moira. You know this shouldn't even be happening."

"Couples beat worse odds every day, Erik. I know how absolutely overjoyed Charles would be, if--" She trails off, catching Erik's expression. "That's why you want this kept secret, isn't it?"

Erik is silent.

"He's stronger than you give him credit for," she continues, "Erik, you two have been through so much. He should be here."

It's possibly one of the worst things Moira could say. Though she could mean anything--grad school, bills, working the beat; the wait with adoption agencies, the pressures of being openly gay and mutant; his issues with anger or Charles's with drinking--he can only hear it as one thing. 

He's heard those words over and over since the accident. _You two have been through so much_ , and that ingratiating little smile, as if Erik's a martyr just for staying with his husband. Like they're some sort of inspiration, because his motorbike was blindsided on one of the few days Charles was persuaded to accept a ride to work. Just because Erik didn't fucking walk away from the wreckage caused by the glancing blow of a freight truck he couldn't entirely deflect.

If he had pants on, he'd walk out. "If you think I'm not perfectly aware that Charles is possibly the only person on this planet worth any credit, _doctor_ , you're mistaken. If we've been through so much as you say, do us a favor. You will tell me two things, and then I can assure you we'll happily suffer you together for the next nine months."

"Seven," Moira automatically corrects. "I'm guessing you need to know, definitively, that you're pregnant," and that she stops, looking at him closely.

"Erik," she prompts, "I know you've been pregnant before. From your age alone in the records, you had a very legitimate reason to terminate."

"While it's very kind, I don't fucking need you to validate my decisions--"

"For God's sake," she rubs her eyes tiredly. "Christ. Erik, of course you don't. Just, between us--was that the only reason?"

Erik swallows, and gives the only answer he can.

"I need the test, Moira. If he's fathered a terminal mutant," he says, barely remembering the medical English phrasing, "It's something no one needs experience."

He startles when he feels her hand over his own. He hadn't even realized she'd stood.

"I might not agree with you, Erik. But I promise to help you through this, to the best of my abilities."

There's little he can think to say in reply.

"Fine," he says. "Then let's get started."

Moira excuses herself after briefly explaining the technicalities: one of the nurses will be in with the ultrasound. They'll estimate the fetal age based on the results, since estimating off a menstrual cycle is clearly out of the question, and as Erik is clearly no help with estimating a conception date (it's impossible, he'd said while trying not to blush, given that he and Charles haven't used protection for a number of years, and since they have anal sex at least four times a week, with Charles often the penetrating partner). From there, they'll either perform the amniocentesis in the office today, or they'll wait a few weeks.

Waiting seems intolerable, but Moira insists. "Fourteen weeks. That's the earliest I'll do it, and that's even pushing it," she said. "It's not a procedure without risks."

He agrees.

And then waits, listening for the voices of Moira and the nurse in the hall; reaching out to feel for the too-slow progress of the steel frame of the ultrasound.

By the time the nurse comes in, he's almost lost his nerve completely. He hates not-knowing, but in some ways--in a lot of ways, he corrects--knowing would be far worse.

The ultrasound equipment feels heavy, from his careful sensing. Years of destroyed television sets, computers, VCRs, radios, and that Roomba Erik was certain Charles bought merely to terrify Langy (the cat, who twelve years ago had the misfortune of meeting Charles before Erik, suffering her to the fate of being named "Langerhans") had taught Erik to be cautious with his powers around electronic equipment. All the same, the nurse--one of the few visibly-mutant staff members Erik's seen here--pushes it easily. Her skin is metallic, and he wonders briefly if he could sense her if he tried.

Though it would undoubtedly be rude, the thought is oddly comforting. If he has to run, she just might be as easily neutralized as Logan at the department's compulsory "winter holiday" party. He tries to smile normally, like a regular pregnant father would. If she seems disquieted, the nurse doesn't show it. She deftly sets up the machine, smiling back and giving one of those canned greetings, the whole hello-mister-Lensherr-my-name-is-Cessily bit.

Really, he thinks. _Cessily_. He puts it on the top of the Names To Hide From Charles list, alongside _Marie Curie_ and anything beginning with the letter X.

Glancing at the darkened screen, he's gripped by another wave of nausea. What if there's no back to the skull, no fusion of the spine, organs out all--

"You seem uncomfortable," she continues, looking up from where she's powering up the machine. "I'm sure you know the procedure is painless." He wants to laugh at her, say something scathing as he would to Moira, but the expression on her mercury-bright face is all too understanding.

"Would you prefer I left that screen off? I actually work off this," she says, gesturing at the small LCD display connected to the ultrasound itself. It occurs to him, suddenly, that the screen he's looking at is a peripheral set up for the benefit of happy couples like the two in the waiting room.

"Please," he replies, and--even though he knows it's overkill, and done just for his benefit--she smiles at him and disconnects the screen entirely. It makes him slightly more agreeable to do as she says, laying back, pulling his gown up.

Her gloved hands are as cold as the gel she squeezes out on his stomach as she carefully pulls his boxers down a bit further, exposing his abdomen down to the pubic bone.

The hard plastic of the probe drags slow through the hair on his lower belly. He can't even breathe, watching her face as she frowns at the small display.

What does she see? Why does she look so perturbed? The probe digs back and forth. He wishes Charles was here, he wishes Moira was doing this. Erik knows Moira, he could tell right away if she saw something _non-compatible with extra-uterine life_ , and really is a _nurse_ even qualified to--

"Stop thinking so hard," the nurse says, still frowning at the screen.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize--" he says, mortified. Great. Nine and a half years living with a telepath and four working with another should make someone at least somewhat cautious about mentally insulting others.

"I'm not," she replies, grinning up at him. "You're just obvious. I can tell you're not," she continues as she looks back to the screen, "but you know psionic-types, I take it?"

"My husband," Erik says. "I was just insulting your technical skill in my mind. He wouldn't be pleased."

She laughs. "Well, I've done my share of these, Mr. Lensherr. I'd ask what you two are hoping for," she tilts the probe slightly, as if trying to catch sight of something. "But it's become a rather ambiguous question these days, don't you think?"

It has, at that. Boy or girl; mutant or human.

The genetic test he's about to get is strictly regulated, at least in America. The Mutant Protection Act of 1992 made it clear enough. _Genetic testing determining the mutant status of a fetus is henceforth limited solely to usage in the cases of mutant-with-mutant conception, for the purpose of identification and treatment of the terminal defect known as Fatal Mutant Syndrome._ He'll still get the full results, though; one of the ironies of a mutant relationship. A 25% chance of no child at all, but at least there's the dubious consolation prize of knowing if your offspring will be mutant or not.

"Perhaps. At least the answer remains constant," he eventually replies. She's been at this long enough, surely she's found it--the heart on the outside of the body, the exposed spinal column--that thing that will condemn him from what he's hoping for.

The nurse looks away from the screen after hitting a few keys. He hears and senses a printer firing up. "And what would that be, Mr. Lensherr?"

He shrugs, much as he's able to while lying back on a sheet of butcher paper.

"As long as it's healthy."

Cessily takes the probe off, wipes it down. And as she does so, she admits that--though she's seen her share of these--she can't really give a diagnosis.

"But I can tell you what I saw," she says, offering him a wipe to clean off. "And I saw what looked like an entirely healthy fetus, maybe about twelve weeks old. I'll give Dr. MacTaggert the results, and she'll be back in. Feel free to straighten yourself up."

Unsteady, he sits up. Just like that, he thinks, watching the nurse re-coil the power cable. Just like that, and he knows he's pregnant. It's hard not to feel a little giddy, though he knows he'll have at least two more weeks of hell. And as she opens the door, tugging the equipment out, the nurse adds one last thing.

"Congratulations, Mr. Lensherr," she says. He shakes his head and waves her away, but inside he lets a small bubble of hope well up.

He could get used to hearing that.

He's dressed by the time Moira returns. The new certainty of his pregnancy makes him sharply aware of his body, though there's no visible difference; his pants fit the same as they always have.

The thought that Charles's kid has been growing in him for the last _three months_ \--he sits heavily back on the exam table as he waits, trying to remember when he'd last had a drink, or if he's been eating decently. By the time Moira comes in--glossy prints from the ultrasound in-hand--he's in the midst of calculating when that night after the Toynbee case was, when he and his partner Sarah wound up splitting a few pitchers and he'd had to crash on her sofa.

"Well," she says, "First, if I don't get an invitation to the shower--"

"I'm sure Charles will send out a bulk mailing."

Moira smiles. "Then I'll be sure not to feel too honored to be there."

Nodding at the images, Erik asks again if it looks healthy, asks how old it looks.

"An ultrasound isn't a definitive diagnostic tool. It's also difficult to estimate age based on fetal development, given the possibility of a mutant pregnancy--I'm sure you know the science isn't very exact. But, from my estimation, you have nothing to worry about at this time."

Impatiently, Erik leans forward. "And--"

"And you're just going to have to try and stay calm for the next two weeks. You can schedule the appointment with Sean as you go. Now," Moira says, looking annoyingly smug as she pulls out a pad of paper, "I'm going to write you a few prescriptions. I'm sure you'll ignore my professional opinion to take your husband out for dinner and give him the photos."

Glowering, Erik takes the proffered paper. In her sloppy hand there's orders for prenatal vitamins, and for some medication with which Erik's entirely unfamiliar.

"Mild androgen-blocker," Moira explains. "Current best practice for male pregnancy, there's fairly conclusive data indicating a lowered risk of miscarriage. You can have the literature reviews if you'd like. You'll experience urinary urgency, water retention, possibly mild sexual dysfunction. In short, you'll feel pregnant. If you do experience anything more severe--mood swings, depression, any sudden onset of emotions beyond your usual expansive repertoire--call me."

He's about to ask her to slow down, but she's already asking if he has any questions. Begrudgingly, he has to admire her. He asks for copies of the studies though, more to ensure Moira knows he still finds her qualifications as a mutant health specialist dubious than to verify the research. She shakes her head and opens her laptop.

After he's scheduled the follow-up--two weeks has never seemed longer, save for when Charles was in hospital--Erik leaves with a thick stack of research studies on mutant reproductive health and male pregnancy. He has to give Moira credit, again. 

There's no way he can hide this all. It'll be difficult enough smuggling prenatal vitamins into the house without Charles hearing his thoughts from a distance of ten blocks.

In the end, most of the papers wind up on a table with typical--human--health brochures at the pharmacy. Erik glares at anyone who comes within his vicinity, annoyed that the mutant activism of his youth has devolved into shuffling mutant health information in with copies of _Lower Your Cholesterol: The Natural Way_ , _Your Glucometer and You_ , and _I'm Pregnant: Now What?_. Using his powers to fidget with his keys, he wonders if he's made himself obsolete. The Human Liberation Front has been all-but-defunct for years now, and he's not certain that destroying the small suburban home that serves as their sole office would look complimentary on his service record.

Mutant life is far from perfect. But between the turn in public opinion--legislating once-common practices, like barring mutants from teaching positions--and the promises he'd once made to Charles, sometimes it feels as if all he can do is write irate emails to television producers who cast humans in mutant roles.

It's a good thing, he reminds himself. _If you're going to survive in there,_ he thinks viciously, _I swear to stop at nothing to make your world livable_.

The paper evidence gone, the pill bottles are smuggled home amidst groceries.

A completely ridiculous amount of groceries, Erik realizes once he's home. The earlier sickness a distant memory, he must have been ravenous while shopping.

 _Or guilty_ , his mind supplies. He tries to ignore that some part of his conscience now sounds suspiciously like one of Charles's oldest med-school friends. _Given that you're about to lie to him for two weeks._ He works sullenly on preparing dinner--Charles will also be starving for a decent meal, after last night--and tries to ignore that voice.

People have kept far worse secrets, for far longer. Even Erik has kept darker ones from Charles in the past, things of which he reluctantly allowed glimpses; the deepest and most shadowed parts of his mind.

If everything goes well in two weeks, there's no harm. Charles will be overjoyed. He'll submit to every last one of Charles's absurd whims, he'll let Charles organize as many embarrassing baby showers as he'd like, he'll go to the most humiliating birthing workshop Charles can dig up on his mutant psychology mailing list.

If it goes poorly...

Erik's powers falter, the grater nearly slicing his palm. There will be no harm, again.

There are things he still keeps hidden.

The clinical translation of an old medical record: _the patient has been informed of all known risks associated with termination_ \--

He shakes his head. It was a long time ago.

Children were never in his future, anyway. It's mere chance that mutant rights have come to the point where he doesn't feel the need to destroy nations and create a separate mutant state; chance that brought a laughing--and very, very drunk--young student to interrupt him one night at a bar, saying _you know, it's mutations like yours that brought us from single-celled organisms_. He's lucky enough to have a life as peaceful as this one. Diabetic cat, telepathic husband, split-level apartment, cluttered desk in the mutant-affairs division--it's all so much more than he would have hoped for as a fifteen-year-old.

Wishing for a child on top of it all is excessive, when he thinks about it. Even greedy--

There's a trick Erik learned, dealing with Agent Frost, to stopping an internal monologue you don't particularly want to share. Thinking abruptly of the specific vibration of steel, of the magnetic pull of an old vegetable peeler, of the familiar composition of the shocks on a city bus--his powers are largely unfathomable from an outside mind, and he's learned it can work well to throw Frost off.

After so many years together, if Charles hasn't developed his own private understanding of the invisible world of ferrokinetics, he's at least figured out that if Erik's actively thinking of their toaster he's probably trying to _not_ think about something else. More than one birthday present has been ruined that way, so instead Erik blocks his mind with _god that meal was awful, why does she insist on tormenting us, I should change the locks_ the minute he senses the signature of metal humming down a subway line. 

He's long wondered who has the longer reach, in terms of powers. It's difficult to tell, particularly as they experience their mutations so differently. Erik knows that Charles is often distracted, and rarely extends his reach save for when he's seeking something or is actively concerned. The latter makes for a very real possibility that Charles has already sensed Erik's mind, but worrying about it _now_ won't help keep his thoughts concealed. He dwells in his agitation of years of being subjected to Raven Darkholme-Adler's incessant attempts at poisoning him in his own home, and sure enough when Charles unlocks the door his expression is faintly perturbed.

"I'm glad you're feeling so much better," he says, unwinding his scarf, "but you cannot forbid my only sister from setting foot in our apartment."

It takes every effort not to give in and turn to Charles, to lean down and kiss him senseless and grab his hand to place low on his own stomach; but Erik succeeds in merely grumbling into the salad.

"Even when she's attempting to kill your only husband?"

Charles laughs. He's tossed his coat and papers and everything else on the sofa, though they've a perfectly good closet by the door and Charles has his own perfectly good desk. Erik lets himself be annoyed. It's simple enough to allow Charles's customary sloppiness rub irritating against his own too-spartan sense of orderliness. Erik is not entirely beyond the idea of picking a week-long fight.

Though his agitation is no doubt palpable, Charles wheels up beside him.

"Come now, Raven adores you," he tries. Erik does his best to not make eye contact, knowing he'll cave in moments, should Charles have his customary kicked-dog expression.

"Kicked dog?" Charles questions. "Erik, for god's sake. Do come here. You're in a mood and I won't have it," he declares, imperious. He tugs gently at Erik's hip.

Erik can sense the cautious raking of Charles's powers in his mind. Charles is able to tell immediately when Erik is truly upset; Erik's used to the way Charles has become accustomed to keeping himself from Erik's mind at these times.

"I wish you'd let me in, my friend," he'd said once, very early in their relationship. "But I hope you know I'd never force the matter."

He hadn't believed Charles, then. He didn't believe Charles for years after. But at this point, feeling Charles's gentle prodding--he knows that this is Charles's way of asking.

_Are you upset? Are you ill?_

_Can I help?_

It's tentative and gentle. The feeling of Charles in his mind is a familiar comfort, and as foolish as it might be to give in--Charles could very well read the entire afternoon in seconds--he can't tolerate keeping Charles out. He plays up his irritation. It's just enough to let Charles know it's mostly show, and the little burst of happiness from Charles's mind makes him grin despite himself.

"I simply will not have it," Charles repeats, putting his accent on thick.

"Then let me change the locks," Erik says. All the same, he leans down to kiss Charles quickly.

"Hope you're hungry," he brusquely says after straightening.

Still, when Charles brushes his hand up Erik's flank, allows his fingers to stray carelessly over the curve of hip toward his stomach, it's all he can do to hide his unease.


	3. Chapter 3

The next weeks are even more excruciating than he imagined. It would have been easy, had every night been like the first two, Charles exhausted from work and Erik with the excuse of illness. After dinner, Charles would sit up in bed next to him, going over journals or reading, unperturbed by Erik's request for an early night. As unlikely as he'd be to admit it, Erik welcomed the silent companionship of those nights--Charles's mind wrapping warm around him, the simple comfort of being expected to do little else than rest. Charles falls asleep well after him, those first nights; and if he woke with Charles's palm curved over the still-flat plane of his abdomen it was still easy enough to excuse as mere accident.

In fact, at times those two weeks hiding from Charles were unnerving. _Have we become so familiar_ , he'd wonder sometimes, _that we've become complacent?_ He's reminded of times over the last years, when he'd find himself saying something he'd thought innocuous, and he'd only figure out Charles was upset _days_ later; of the time two years ago, when he'd discovered a collection of those small plastic liquor bottles in Charles's luggage.

It was easier to excuse those moments as some internal fault of his own. He's never been particularly good with people, and for the most part he's never felt a particular need for developing that particular skill. There's far more important things to learn--say, how to destroy the HLF's small suburban home office and make it look like a gas leak. There's rarely been a day that he doesn't consider it a small miracle Charles puts up with him at all.

But knowing that Charles--a telepathic psychologist--can miss something so obvious as _his husband's pregnancy_? For all he's glad that Charles just goes on, seemingly oblivious, Erik can't help but be troubled.

And, for all he's able to keep it from Charles--or at least, he often thinks ruefully, for all that Charles is able to let him _believe_ he's been subtle--it's impossible to keep something so insurmountably huge hidden for long.

Erik wishes that he didn't know the depth of Charles's hopes for a child. He would be able to ignore it as a possibility; as some small growth in him with a fifty percent chance of becoming something more than an ill-fated bundle of cells. Instead, when he's not carefully shielding his thoughts from Charles, he's largely obsessing on how to stack the odds for this kid's survival. It's easy on his days off--he and Charles eat decently enough, Erik had already quit smoking, and he rarely drank--but work is a different matter.

He's even aware of how easily provoked he now is, how he's constantly finding excuses to get in some target practice or bury himself in reports to distract from the gnawing unease. In the end, he lasts all of four days before he snaps at Sarah when they're on the way to pick up coffee.

Snubbing out the cigarette she'd just lighted, she looked shocked. Though she didn't smoke in front of him often as a rule--the temptation to pick it up again was constant for Erik--he'd never said anything about it before. He realized his mistake the minute he spoke, and tried to brush by her.

He winced as he saw her look speculatively at his stomach.

If his sudden complete aversion to smoking wasn't an obvious enough tell for her, his expression at that moment certainly was. 

"Charles, you dog," she said, walking faster to meet his loping stride.

"It's not like that.”

"Of course not. He knocked you up within the honorable institution of holy matrimony--" 

"For fuck's sake," he interrupted, stopping and turning to face her. It was probably the wrong thing to say. She just smirked and said "exactly," and he gave up the hope of covering it up.

She'd just be angry later, in the off chance this kid survived.

"Look," he said, sticking his hands in his pockets to keep from fidgeting with the metal around them, "this isn't public knowledge."

Though Erik had long given up his old ideas of a separatist mutant community as a mere hopeless ideal, there's rarely a time when he's not grateful he works entirely with mutants. Any other time, he knows she'd go on heckling him--say something about how typical it was of him, keeping a secret until it's too huge to hide--but she stops. Her expression is as sympathetic as he's ever seen, at least on her.

"You don't know yet."

Twenty-five percent means almost every adult mutant knows someone. A friend, a coworker, a sister--someone who's gone through _this_. Erik shrugs, light as he can manage.

"Charles can't hear about this," he warns. She raises her hands.

"Sure, sure." She keeps walking, and Erik sighs, relieved. There's a reason he's always partnered up with mutants like her and Logan. As they walk in nearly-companionable silence, he's glad for the reputation he's developed in the department. Were she anyone else, he'd be suffering some emotional scene, it'd be spread all over the city by the time he was off the clock.

As it is, when they're halfway back to the precinct, she nudges him with a bony shoulder. "Just remember you're not alone, Lensherr," she says. Thankfully she leaves it at that.

 

He knows Sarah limits her conversations with others in the department to terse replies and the times she voices her opinion about some coworker's internalized mutantphobia, so it's a mystery as to how the _entire department_ hears about his pregnancy by the end of the week. He's willing to bet it has to do with his escalating annoyance with Detective Muñoz--or, more specifically, Detective Muñoz's desk, which is adorned with papers and empty coffee cups and framed photos of enough kids to lead Erik to believe Muñoz's husband's mutation covers evolving to beat the odds of Fatal Mutant Syndrome. Erik wouldn't wager Alex to be clever enough to figure out why Erik's so easily provoked lately. Unfortunately, _someone_ in the department is, and Erik winds up spends the next week enduring _knowing_ and _sympathetic_ looks.

And every night, he goes home and tries to think of anything else.

As the weeks crawl agonizingly on, it's almost enough for Erik to let his own guard down. Charles is so obviously troubled, so clearly not reading Erik's thoughts. They've fought before, of course. There's been times they've gone about the apartment studiously ignoring each other for days. 

The atmosphere is more uneasy now. Erik finds himself alternating between affection and antagonism, and it's no surprise when Charles begins to spend his nights working later and later on his writing and research. Often, Charles attempts to figure out what's wrong--the conventional way, through awkward conversations over dinner--but the excuses Erik comes up with are so clearly just that, the words come out empty and flat.

And in the mornings, Erik feels even more ill than ever.

He's constantly on the verge of just telling Charles, but no more so than when he wakes to Charles sliding in bed beside him, late at night. No more so than when he hesitantly curls close, wary as he is of intimacy and the way it leaves his mind, thrown wide-open. 

Being together this long, they've certainly had longer dry spells than two weeks. Whether from pills, hormones, or nerves, Erik isn't certain he'd be capable of initiating or responding to anything; and though it's starting to seem as if Charles is as wary with his powers as when they were first dating, Erik has to admit it doesn't take telepathy to read his mood. Charles isn't completely distant--like usual, Erik wakes to Charles half-sprawled over him, he welcomes the brush of Charles's shower-warm skin as they huddle under the heap of blankets, both of them as conservative as ever with the heating bill. But during those weeks, a familiar and casual kiss goodbye when they're off to work in the morning is about as heated as things get.

Save for one night.

As endless as those weeks seemed, when Erik was finally confronted with the night before his appointment, he could only think that this was all happening too quickly. He and Charles shared a tense dinner of take-out--Erik was too keyed up to attempt cooking, and it was his night for it--and Erik took a long shower after, mainly to be alone with his endless sense of foreboding. Not as if the distance mattered--Charles was more than capable of reading everyone in the apartment complex, much less someone obsessing endlessly about one medical procedure in the bathroom--but Erik felt ridiculous enough worrying like this without doing it in the same room as his husband.

And it was around then that he began thinking--what would he say, waiting for the results? He was obviously paying for the option of getting preliminary ones. Another twenty-four hours was going to be difficult enough, he couldn't wait the ten days for full results. But when-- _if_ , he tried to convince himself--they came back positive, he'd have to go through another procedure.

There might not be much sign he'd been through the amniocentesis. But between the possible side effects of the procedure, and the possible appointment to follow, it could be a very long time before he'd be up to having sex. At the least, he reasons, they can have one last normal night, before--

 _Before we've got a kid to deal with_ , he attempts to tell himself. This is absurd, being so fixated on a matter beyond his control. Either he'll need an abortion or he won't, and it's not as if Charles won't have another chance at being a father--the paperwork's still in with the agency, they might yet get a call about a scaled newborn some suburbanite humans want gone. 

He dries off, determined. There's a possibility he'll be massively uncomfortable in the next week. He might as well have a recent memory of something pleasant.

The apartment was far too cold to walk around in just a towel. A few years ago, he would have, anyway, just to be provocative; but by now he's figured out that Charles doesn't mind the fraying robe at all. He walks the short distance back in the living room, where Charles is absently scrolling through some lengthy email while the leftovers cool on the coffee table. The way Charles jumps when he leans over the back of the couch is vaguely reassuring, Charles too focused on work to accidentally eavesdrop on the last thirty minutes.

"You coming to bed?" Erik asks. A little blunt, he thinks as he ducks down to kiss the stubbled curve of Charles's jaw.

Being forward has merits, when it comes to Charles. He immediately closes the laptop and reaches back to pull at Erik, turns to meet his lips. _As you've asked so nicely_ , he hears, bright and amused and welcome, _how could I think to say no?_

They kissed like that, an unhurried build of warmth, for a few minutes. Erik trails his hands down Charles's chest, pressing firm to map the familiar terrain of Charles's body through a shapeless sweater. The answering arousal that forms in Charles's thoughts makes Erik shift closer; he's not sure he's able to hide his own burst of relief as he feels his own cock thicken as he's pressed up against the back of the sofa. He'd been taking the androgen blockers faithfully, and from what he could gather from the frankly astonishing amount of male mutant pregnancy support blogs that he kept finding set as the homepage on his work computer, the "mild sexual dysfunction" was far more prevalent than Moira had implied.

 _I want you_ , he thinks at Charles, and he smiles as Charles moans into the kiss. They'd quickly figured out their shared proclivities early in the relationship, and Erik's often suspected that there's little that gets a strong telepath off quite like explicit consent. He lets his own powers tug out at Charles's chair, nudging it closer in wordless demand. _Come to bed with me, Charles,_ he thinks loudly.

Charles pulls away. Before Erik's caught his breath, Charles has ducked back in for a final quick kiss. He's smiling when he breaks it off again, his face is flushed beautifully. Erik's half-tempted to forget the bedroom, even after Charles has moved the laptop to the relative safety of the couch cushion beside him and has transferred to the wheelchair. _Technically_ the armrests aren't removable, but the frame is metal, and it would be far from the first time. But it's freezing in the apartment, and Charles catches his thought and sends a wordless impression of the last time Erik tried to warm up the frame. They had been trying not to be caught at it behind a rest stop in Michigan, and Erik had lost control, earning himself a burn to the inner thigh. Erik winces--that wouldn't be the last their powers would go haywire during sex--and concedes the point.

Heading back to the bedroom, Charles sends a quick apology and stops in the bathroom. This is familiar by now, too, and yet another reason to not go at it in the living room like a pair of teenagers. Erik goes on to bed, strips off his robe and dives under the covers alone. The apology on Charles's part was strictly unnecessary--early after Charles's injury he needed Erik's help, and though it took time, Erik finally got Charles to where he believed the fact that lifting Charles off a toilet didn't make him any less desirable. They'd since more than abused the privacy of accessible single-stall restrooms and the common assumption that Erik was "just an attendant."

Though he's not sure what Charles wants tonight, it never hurts to be optimistic. Erik pulls the lube from the nightstand. The nervousness is still there, but as distracted as he is, it's no longer so pressing. When he'd left the shower, he had almost been sure he wouldn't be able to go through with this; that he would be too caught up in the possibility of Charles reading him, that he would be frozen by an absent touch on his stomach. 

Letting his hand fall to pump lazily at his own cock, he grins ruefully. Or that he wouldn't be able to get it up, and that doesn't seem to be a concern at all. At least not this early, he lets himself think. Maybe next year they'll have to--

His thoughts trail off when Charles comes in the room. Though he's under about six blankets, it's not enough to hide the motion of his arm, and Charles smirks.

"Impatient, darling?" he asks, bringing the chair in close. Erik grumbles at the endearment, but lifts the blankets aside to let cold air and Charles underneath. Charles is pulling off his sweater, and Erik starts in on his pants, thinking loudly about what he'd like, wondering what Charles would like, as he does so. He finally has Charles nude and leaning against the headboard under him, sending _yes_ , and a wave of joy and desire washes over them as Charles pulls the covers over, and lets his hands linger over Erik's backside.

He rocks back against Charles's fingers. Charles is only half-hard beneath him. This takes time, but Erik's always needed the build-up, needed Charles's all-too-thorough version of foreplay.

Though he's always enjoyed penetration--nearly every mutant who lived through puberty has a "how my powers were honed through masturbation" story, and Erik is no exception--his later experiences left him wary of anything that hinted at a surrender of control. 

Brash and impatient as Charles was when they first got together, thankfully he enjoyed fucking and being fucked equally. It gave Erik time, a chance to figure out that they both might like to work through their issues, to realize how unlike surrender it could be, with Charles.

Now, while they enjoy _a lot_ together... There's something about the way Charles always clenches at his hips, always makes the most desperate breathy sounds as Erik rides him. What Charles has shared he can feel, the dim sensation of sinking in Erik's tight ass, the sharper pleasure of Erik's hands and mouth on his chest and neck, the way he steals at Erik's wild enjoyment of a cock thrusting deep up in him--it's obvious that Charles _loves_ this. Erik moves so he's kneeled over at Charles's side, bent over his lap where Erik can Charles can reach his ass, and thinks _please, I want your cock in my mouth, your fingers up_ \--before Charles groans and grabs for the lube.

Erik could get off from just this. He has, actually; several times--Charles likes watching him, likes hearing him dwell on how Charles tastes, likes his longtime fascination with Charles's foreskin, and sometimes it's enough for Erik to come over the sheets before Charles has slid in a finger. 

"Look at you," Charles whispers. He's generous with the lube, slicking it back and forth, working over Erik's perineum and his clenching hole. Erik groans around Charles's slowly-firming cock, brings his hand up grip tightly at the base, and Charles keeps speaking, soft and quiet. "Just lovely."

Pulling up, Erik's spit slicks his hand and Charles's cock. He pumps a few times, switches his hands off to let his right track up Charles's hip, up where Charles can feel him properly. If he nudges against Charles's mind, he can multitask a little better--see where he's putting his hand while still bent over Charles's prick, or at least catch when Charles's mind flares with _yes, there_ \--but he stays in his own thoughts. It's just as good like this, brushing random over Charles's flushed skin, hearing the hitch in his breathing. When Charles finally--and Erik thinks that word pointedly, deliberate enough to make Charles laugh--pushes a finger in Erik's ass, he scratches his blunt nails lightly down over Charles's ribs in reward. It always makes Charles shiver with a pleasure Erik can't quite grasp, and now is no different.

"Erik," Charles says, hooking his finger and making both of them shudder, "Oh. Oh, love, you _are_ tight.”

Having his head buried in Charles's lap at least means he can hide the fact that sometimes--like now--Charles can make even Erik blush. He thrusts back against Charles's fingers, silently urging for more.

"No, not too quickly." Charles draws his fingers out, squirts more lube out over them. By now, Charles is mostly erect; Erik lifts his head and leans up to suck hard at the curve of his neck instead, trying to get him to feel a little urgency.

Charles's _please, teeth, now_ sparks in his mind, and he thinks _your fingers, then--_ in return. Three of Charles's fingers push deep, a sudden burning pleasure, and he nips firmly over Charles's collarbone.

He feels almost lewdly slick. There's a reason the store they'd wound up frequenting--"well, it's not mutant-owned, but at least it's women-owned?" had been Raven's selling point, but it _was_ clean and accessible--one day found it economically viable to stock the half-liter size of the overpriced British lube Charles fancied. By now he knows that Charles gets off on this--slicking Erik up, stretching him out until he's loose and cursing--and he sends _please, I'd like this in me sometime tonight_ as he grips again at the base of Charles's erection.

"Yes, all right," he says, laughing breathlessly. "Pretty as you are when you've a fist up--"

"Fuck," Erik mutters. He bucks again, the tip of Charles's little finger catching the rim of his hole, and quickly he shakes his head. "Not tonight," he urges, "Please, I want your cock." They've not done that for over a month, and he knows Charles could easily convince him.

What the hell was he thinking, Erik wonders, doing anything outside of this bed for the last two weeks?

"I wondered that myself, darling."

It's only Charles's tone--still warm, joking--that keeps him from startling, but he must tense all the same. _Does he know_ , Erik can't help thinking. Charles's fingers slip free, he reaches out with his clean hand to gently urge Erik to straddle his lap. 

"Hush, come on now," Charles murmurs. Erik goes along in a bit of a daze, trying not to think of anything. "Come along, we're here now, let's have you," he hears, and he shudders as Charles gets him lined up.

Leaning forward, he kisses Charles desperately. _Sorry,_ he thinks, and Charles sends a wash of calm over him; deftly so, careful not to settle Erik's arousal. Erik would be furious at the intrusion, but it seems a waste to pick a fight now. " _Charles_ ," he warns. It comes out sounding like a plea.

"Yes," Charles says. His hands rest lightly on Erik's hips, waiting, and Erik reaches down to again grip firm around the base of Charles's cock and presses himself back.

As slick as he is, he takes Charles easily; the stretch of being filled making him curse again under his breath. He doesn't let himself get accustomed to it, working himself rough on Charles's cock, trying to find that earlier mindlessness. He wants this, of course--his own cock is still hard, brushing against Charles's abdomen as he thrusts--but now that gnawing worry is back, constant in the back of his mind.

Charles's hands tighten sharply on his hips. "Erik, please," he urges, "Don't rush this."

He's not weak, and Erik stills himself rather than breaking that hold. He lets Charles stroke lingeringly over his back and sides, lets himself be guided in a slow, languid rhythm.

 _I have missed you_ , he hears Charles think. It's soft enough in his mind for him to wonder if Charles meant to send it at all.

Leaning against Charles, his cock pressed between them, his thighs warm with the familiar strain of holding this position--he gives in, matches his movements to the gentle urging of Charles's touch. He buries his head against Charles's neck, concentrates on the little hitches of Charles's breathing when Erik licks beneath his ear or scratches lightly down his chest. It's almost enough to keep his focus from tomorrow. It's also slow and so painfully tender that Erik nearly pulls away. 

They've had sex together like this before--languid, affectionate, taking their time with it--and _physically_ it's as good as ever. His hips are angled so the head of Charles's cock rubs firm against his prostate. The stretch and the smell of Charles's skin and the breathy sounds Charles makes sometimes; it's all there. And as gradual as the build is, he's nearly over the edge--panting short and shaky--when he realizes what's different.

When he comes--his cock pulsing weak between their bodies--it's even more obvious. Charles rubs his lower back as he strains, whispers the same sort of nonsense he's always whispered when he works Erik through orgasm. But it hardly sounds as if he's affected by it, in the way he usually is; and Erik knows.

Every time they'd made love like this, Charles had been in his mind. Their thoughts have been twined deeply, sometimes so enmeshed that Charles left the telepathic contact as they slept afterwards.

Somewhere towards the end, Charles had cut himself off. He had been shielding.

It takes Erik a long time to catch his breath, face still pressed against Charles's skin; longer still for him to brush an apologetic kiss against Charles's neck and shift so he's off Charles's cock. He's stilled when he goes to concentrate on Charles, when he tries to make him come as well.

This happens, sometimes--learning their way around sex again, around intimacy with rerouted or absent nerves, had been difficult. For the first time in years, though, Erik feels guilty.

"Let me," he says, breathlessly. What if he won't have another chance--

Charles catches his hands, settling them. "It's fine, my dear," he says, and though his voice is as light as ever, Erik hesitates at the absence of his mind.

"Okay," he replies, reluctant. "If you're certain."

"Don't be so worried, darling. There's always tomorrow," Charles says; and Erik gets up to get a towel, to clean them off, ignoring the frustrated "Erik--" that follows him as he leaves the sanctuary of the blankets and retreats once more to the bathroom.

Later, lying beside Charles, he'll feel the soft prod of Charles's concern. He does the mental equivalent of rolling over and feigning sleep; an odd trick that he's learned does nothing else than annoy Charles.

"I just wish," Charles says softly, "That you'd tell me."

"Give me time. A few more days," he replies, unthinking. It's a foolish move. With his luck the preliminary test will be inconclusive. And if it's positive--

But he means it, he realizes. They can't keep on like this. Whatever happens, in another two days, he has to tell Charles something.

Charles isn't happy with the answer, Erik knows. As hard as he can, he thinks, _I am sorry, Charles_ , and _You know you're all that matters to me_ , and a fierce wordless burst of everything he feels for Charles. 

But he hasn't Charles's gifts. There's no way to tell if Charles is listening, and it takes Erik a long time to fall into an uneasy sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, he feels horrid. All the same, after a few hours of unrestful sleep, he gets out of bed early. He cooks a large breakfast, not wanting any of it, mainly because it gives him something to do, an excuse to feel the comforting call of steel and iron. He's scraping out the skillet when Charles finally comes in.

"What's the occasion?" Charles asks, sounding mildly amused. There is, Erik realizes, an absurd amount of food for two people. He shrugs, mumbles something about skimping on his cooking duties last night. Though he'd figured he'd be queasy, and though his head is still splitting from a lack of sleep, once he's sitting with Charles and finished a little coffee, he realizes he's ravenous.

He flushes when he catches Charles watching him, smiling one of his--Erik's tried to think of a kinder word, but "dorky" covers it so well--smiles. He turns his attention back to the coffee and gruffly asks Charles what he's looking at, and if he's going to eat anything.

If Charles is still thinking of last night, he does a decent enough job of hiding it. He apologizes for his distraction, excusing it on work--it's Saturday, again--and Erik scoffs, but lets it slide. Not as if he isn't guilty of several half-truths these days.

Save for the exchange of nausea for hunger, the morning is becoming a duplicate of last week. He brushes his teeth, letting the cat bolt yowling in the bathroom behind him. He walks Charles to the door, leans down to kiss him lightly.

And when Charles grabs his hand and says, "Whatever you're so concerned over, good luck," he stays silent. But he squeezes back, and thinks, mostly to himself, _it won't influence the odds, but thank you_.

Time seems to dilate and contract, through the wait for his appointment, the ride to Moira's clinic, the revisiting of that "cozy" lobby. Belatedly, he realized everyone in the waiting room begin to favor the chairs on the other side of the aquarium from him, and in an effort to stop glowering, he begrudgingly inspects the papers and magazines on the table beside him. There's the usual human-marketed periodicals you see everywhere: a copy of _Newsweek_ , of _Natural Health_ , of _Parents_. There's also some of the specialty mutant magazines, a dogeared kid's book titled _But Mom, I'm a Mutant!_ , and a few pamphlets.

Erik has read the mass-produced human-centered pamphlet on amniocentesis five times and is reading the mutant one for the seventh--comparing them, he reasons, he's read up on the procedure already--by the time the guy from last visit nervously calls his name. His eyes catch one more time on the bolded "frequently asked" questions.

_What if my mutation affects the equipment?_

_Is it dangerous?_

"Mr. Lensherr?" the assistant repeats. If anything, he sounds even more tentative.

"All right," Erik says, burying the pamphlet amidst the magazines again. _Let's do this_.

Of course, by now Erik's been over the procedure countless times: in conversation, in articles, in footage Sarah had found and pulled up for him on her laptop, and endlessly in his mind. He's still replaying it as the nervous medical assistant gets his weight and blood pressure--Erik tunes in just enough to hear he's gained a healthy amount of weight--so when the nurse comes in with a consent form and an explanation of the procedure, he's well justified in his irritation.

He signs off without reading, the words already indelible in his mind. Infection. Fetal injury. A one-in-four-hundred chance of miscarriage. It's considered a "low-risk" procedure, he reminds himself. The nurse--not visibly mutant, but Erik recalls her from a panel he let Charles talk him into speaking at a few years back, some mandatory mutant sensitivity thing for civic employees--appears to think the procedure safe enough, smiling off his interruption and excusing the form as "an excuse to gather patient autographs." Erik doesn't smile.

When she stands, he's hopeful she's just going to gather the equipment and Moira and get this over. Naturally, she seems to bide her time instead. She flips through his chart again, placing the consent form in the front, starts making a few notes. He wishes he'd been more studious with his powers. While “reading" someone's writing through sensing the motion of metal in a pen makes sense in theory, he's never been entirely successful in practice. What can she even be writing, he wonders. It's not as if he's done anything more than sign a form.

"Your primary mutation is ferrokinesis, Mr. Lensherr," she says. It's not a question, and he waits, thinking irritably of how impossible it would be to miss the fact from his chart. "I apologize for the annoyance, but there's no real documentation on the power or extent of the mutation. For your safety, I have to ask--would you have the ability to interfere with any of the components of the test?"

It's a bit showy, but even among mutants, Erik has always found it easier to display his powers than to explain them. Levitating her pen, a blood pressure cuff, and the end of the room's ophthalmoscope, he replies, simply, "I could 'interfere' with all of it."

Working in a mutant health clinic likely makes you inured to the occasional display of kinetic powers. Calmly plucking her pen back out of the air, the nurse--Megan, he thinks, though with a coworker like "Cessily" there's no telling how she spells it--asks if he thinks he _will_ interfere.

A lack of control over one's own power isn't something you're supposed to admit, even among other mutants. If you don't already have control, it's seen as your duty to _find_ it--go to classes, get a therapist, go off to one of those isolated mutant-only communes. Erik looks away, considering the right response.

"Some patients," she offers, "feel a bit more comfortable if they can sense the equipment prior to the procedure. If that's how you experience your mutation--"

"I'd prefer not to be here all day," he says, "but... Yes."

That's how he finds himself alone in the exam room, cautiously manipulating a syringe--disarmingly large in-person--and the parts of the ultrasound less susceptible to magnetic interference. He's not about to admit as such to anyone here, but part of his distaste for medical procedures has always been the unfamiliar structures and compositions of the equipment. The whole thing is uncomfortably similar to how he's heard nurses deal with toddlers--letting him play with the stethoscope before the doctor gets there--but all the same, it's one of the few times he's been given the chance to truly sense out the slope of a bevel or the kinetic fields of martensitic steel.

It's nearly enough to make him comfortable with the procedure. The nurse offered to talk to Moira about the possibility of a mild sedative, but Erik declined. Over his youth, he'd learned how to control his powers under the influence of a variety of substances, but he rather doubted this would be one of them.

Besides, pharmacological companies rarely had data for mutants patients, he thought, much less for pregnant mutants. He had to think of her, now. It, he corrected hastily. It's not even viable yet. And just because the last non-viable pile of cells had appeared, the doctor had said dispassionately, to be female-- 

Moira and the nurse came back in the minute he was aiming the sharp end of a number of medical devices at the door. He'd changed in the room before Megan had come back the first time with the ultrasound, and he awkwardly pulls the gown closer as he guides a few syringes back into the appropriate drawers.

"I hope you didn't break the packages," Moira said eventually, taking a seat near him and pulling the procedural tray closer.

"My powers don't extend to plastic," he said. He'd wished for it often enough, the world would be a lot more convenient were it so. "But feel free to inspect them all."

Moira sighed and shook her head, only glancing casually over the equipment before appearing placated. She wasn't entirely without justification, Erik thought, in imagining that he might cause a bit of damage to get out of the procedure. But as begrudging as the respect between them may be, it was still there. And she knew as well as anyone that he'd hardly come by and put on a threadbare gown on his day off, were he not committed to going through with the test.

"I'll take your word for it," she said, smiling before turning back to the the equipment before her. "I also take it you didn't listen to my advice last time, and Charles still hasn't heard."

"That much should be obvious, given the lack of his presence," Erik muttered. She glanced up at the nurse and something seemed to be communicated, the nurse going to his side. Erik stiffened a little, wary. He'd learned countless tricks from Charles, but working with Frost was bad enough.

The nurse laughed. "Just lean back on the table. You didn't strike me as a telephobe, Mr. Lensherr."

Hesitantly, he laid back, the paper beneath him seeming overly loud. "I was just surprised," he started, but it was something he was supposed to be working on, at least according to Charles. _And the last ten years of contemporary mutant rights literature_ , his mind supplied, so he projected a gruff sort of half-apology. All the better for Moira not to overhear.

There was a brief and fleeting wave of--amusement? acceptance?--from the nurse. It was a bit gauche to ask, and she was already off washing her hands after having made sure he was positioned properly, but he wondered if she was more likely to be an empath. He shielded the thought, all the same.

At first, it was easy enough. Just like before, he found himself coated in cold gel and feeling uncomfortably exposed. The peripheral monitor was angled away from him, at Moira--he turned his head the other way, ignoring Moira's half-hearted attempt at coaxing him to look--as the probe was dragged over his stomach.

This part was simple. Tuning out the word "congratulations" had become second nature, after the entire damn precinct had found out.

When Moira said asked him if he was ready, and got up to scrub her hands, and when the nurse asked him to keep his hands on his chest or behind his head, so she could set up the sterile field...

The mutant rights movement had done wonders for the lives of countless people, particularly in the last few years. Though he'd never exactly been experimented upon, himself, for mutants of Erik's age--particularly, he thought a little hysterically, Jewish mutants raised in Dusseldorf--it was a constant fear. It hadn't been that long since it was commonplace, if he'd been born just decades earlier--

"Take a deep breath, Mr. Lensherr," the nurse interrupts. She projects again, a hint of calm. Empath, Erik thinks once more, and tries to distract himself with the thought. Is it actually more trouble than help, being empathic in her profession? Maybe it rarely factors, like with Charles and his dedication to making patients actually _say_ whatever they're thinking so loudly. It's enough of a distraction to keep him from warping the procedure tray. He closes his eyes, trying to think of anything else than the two people, gowned-up, syringes in hand, looming over him.

He's been through worse than this, and he reminds himself of that fact over and over. It's ridiculous to tense at the sound of an opened medical tray, to be so grateful for the constant warnings he gets from Moira or Megan. "You're about to feel something cold, Mr. Lensherr. I'm just scrubbing the injection site," or "Erik, I'm sure you can feel a needle moving--I'm just drawing up the lidocaine, you'll feel a stick in a moment."

Whenever he'd thought of the procedure--and he'd done little else, these last two weeks--he had been half-certain he'd accidentally put it to a premature end, that he'd have to come back and have it done under sedation. He had even considered talking Moira into just putting him under to begin with, but the thought of letting her think he was _that_ nervous was intolerable. Particularly when his nerves had nothing to do with it.

Quite simply, he hated needles. It wasn't the pain. He had to get inoculations every so often, after all, working as a cop; he knew the pain was practically nonexistent. It was the way he had to block his powers.

It was probably the closest he'd come to understanding how telepathic suppression felt to Charles.

The thought gave him something else to distract his mind. He carefully drew his energy away from the injection site. He didn't know he was entirely successful until he felt the sharp sting of the needle, and the strange sensation of the lidocaine.

He smirked. That was most of the battle, right there. As long as he kept his eyes closed from here on out, he shouldn't be aware of--

"Just to let you know, I'm preparing the main syringe now, Erik," Moira helpfully interrupted.

 _Thank you for that_ , Erik thought. Trying to steady himself and hold that odd power void was difficult enough without knowing a giant needle was coming at him. 

Particularly when, as of the last few weeks, he had become acutely aware of the need to keep his powers collected over his abdomen, of the vulnerability of his body.

"Are you ready?" Moira asked. Erik tried to calm himself and keep still under the ultrasound, and willed the fetus to do the same.

"I've been as ready as I'll ever be. If you would just--"

"Deep breath, then," she interrupted. Without a protest, he obeyed.

At first, he just felt an uncomfortable pressure, metal shoving through deadened nerves. His hands tightened. A sharp cramp then jolted his stomach. The needle passing through the muscle wall, he knew, and he concentrated his powers on everything but the metal now piercing his uterus. 

The procedure wasn't exactly painful. Moira barely had placed the needle before it was being pulled back out, sample collected. More than anything else, it'd just felt _wrong_. Odd enough he had mutated to have a uterus at all, that he was pregnant--now he was getting a needle jammed through his abdomen to pull out amniotic fluid. As the nurse covered the puncture site, he gave in to the impulse to laugh.

"See, not so bad," Moira said absently. She was still staring at the monitors, checking the fetus's heart rate.

"Grow a few spare organs and get stabbed in them," he replied, "and see if you still hold that opinion."

"Thank you, but I'll pass." She wiped down the probe. "The baby looks fine, and tolerated the procedure with ten times the bravery of it's father." Erik grabbed the wipe to clean off his own abdomen from her, grumbling. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the nurse preparing the sample for the lab.

"The preliminary results will be here the afternoon after next, so try to relax," she said, with a grin, clearly expecting him to do nothing of the sort. Before she left, she briefly reminded him of all the things he shouldn't do for the next day--no lifting with anything besides his powers, no strenuous activity, and that includes anything he might be "planning with Charles"--and that he might get more cramps, but to call if they become severe. He tells her he knows it all, and to just release him.

"Okay, okay," she agrees. He's pulled his gown back down by now, and sat up warily, bracing his stomach unconsciously with his right hand. The fetus is still a little young for him to feel, yet; all the same, he imagines she must be uneasy in there, having just been threatened by medical equipment before she'd even made it out into the world.

He tells Moira he'll be by, day after tomorrow, for the results--that they better be ready--and she tells him she can't control the lab but she'll do her best.

For a moment after they leave, he just sits on the edge of the bed, weathering a small cramp.

"Sorry," he grumbles aloud, thinking of how uncomfortable that probably is for the kid, before catching himself.

So it survived the amniocentesis. Great, he thinks.

But there's no promise yet that it'll have the proper sequence of genes to survive the pregnancy. The cramp abates, and he slowly stands and dresses.

Forty-eight hours. He's never going to survive this month.


	5. Chapter 5

He had been intending to go to the grocery store again on the way home, but eventually decided against it. Lifting shopping bags might not be risky, but Erik wasn't about to take any chances. By the time Charles gets home from work, hours later, Erik has fallen asleep on the sofa. He woke to the smell of tomato sauce and garlic, the sound of the radio turned low in the kitchen, the feeling of their cat purring by his side. 

Sitting up prompted another twinge of discomfort, and he winced, bracing his stomach again. A light brush of concern touched his mind, and he quickly pulled his hand away and ignored the cramp.

"I'm fine," he said aloud, stretching as he stood. "Just slept wrong."

"I imagine so," Charles called back, "You're much too tall for the sofa, and you know it." Erik walked into the kitchen, leaned against the counter to watch Charles prepare a salad. His stomach growled, suddenly, and Charles smiled up at him.

"I had hoped you'd be hungry. You've been sleeping for hours," he said, and Erik glanced at the clock. He wasn't able to hide his surprise--it was already well past eight. 

A six-hour nap. It was a good thing he had tomorrow off work, he'd never get to sleep on time.

"You should have woke me," he said, reaching out to steal a slice of tomato.

"But you looked so adorable--oh, don't sulk," Charles replied, smirking. He pulled the salad away from Erik. "Go on, make yourself useful and set the table already."

Charles asked an assortment of probing questions over dinner-- _busy day off, then?_ and _you've seemed tired, lately, anything wrong?_ \--and Erik was glad for the distraction of food. He hadn't eaten since this morning, and he kept his mind away from thoughts of how much more he needed to pay attention to that, now.

Though he thought Charles should be upset, each answer Erik gave to his questions increasingly vague, Charles kept changing the topic contentedly. Whenever Erik's plate emptied, Charles would subtly nudge him mentally to take more. It would have made Erik suspicious, but he could only think _not as if I won't be telling him in a few days, anyway_ , and by the he was done and clearing the dishes, Charles had dropped the topic entirely, already suggested a game of chess.

That night he wound up falling asleep with less trouble than he'd imagined. _Must have been worn out by all that hideous prodding_ , he thought as he began to doze off, warm and full. He felt Charles's fingers falter slightly from the absent path he'd been tracing, back and forth over Erik's neck.

"Erik," Charles started. His voice was quiet, the press of worry nearly palpable. "Please, if you're ill, tell me."

Tilting his head, he kissed Charles's shoulder. Trying to convey reassurance, a sense of how he was _probably_ in good health, was impossible. Charles would read the underlying fear he had, easy as anything.

"I had some tests," he admitted. Charles tensed beside him.

"For?"

Erik was silent for a moment, choosing his words.

"God's sake, Erik," Charles burst out. "It's not as if I can't take it. I thought we'd sworn to each other, no matter what comes up, we'd face it together."

"Charles, it's not" he trailed off, looking away. "It's just that it may be nothing. I don't want to--" _get your hopes up_ , "--to concern you over nothing."

"You don't want to concern me? You're terrified about this, whatever you're facing. What makes you think I wouldn't want to wait with you for these results?"

He couldn't think of anything to say. He knew he _should_ tell Charles. Instead, he said, "Just wait. Please. It's only one more day."

And Charles was clearly displeased with that. He could pry for the truth at any time, and Erik thought it was perhaps only his belief in Charles that he _wouldn't_ that was keeping Charles from withdrawing completely.

"I promise you," he said, kissing Charles again. "I'll know everything in one more day. Let me have tomorrow."

Charles sighed beneath him, a feeling of resignation heavy in their room. Though Erik had tomorrow, he still felt as if he'd lost.

The next day passed slowly, Erik considering every few moments _maybe I can find out what lab they'd used_ , trying to devise a method to encourage a more expedient processing time for the results. How many workers were in the lab? How many breaks did they require in a day? 

Largely he spent the day cleaning, just to have something to occupy his mind. Charles largely spent the day with Raven. Erik couldn't say he was surprised.

He slept fitfully at night, Charles shaking him awake from his dreams twice. They were faceless and unmemorable when Erik awoke. Likely Charles had taken the specifics from him, as pale as Charles had been above him, both times.

"My love," he'd whispered after the second, "I'm sorry."

It wasn't difficult to figure out what Charles had seen--the lonely office, the freezing procedure room, the glint of instruments, the sharp cramps as he had expelled dead tissue--but Erik hoped against all logic that he'd dreamed of his cases or of his childhood. That he'd dreamed of any nightmare other than that one, than that day.

Working the morning of his follow-up with Moira and the results wound up being a blessing, even tired as he was from those dreams. Leaving the apartment before Charles also meant avoiding that painful look of concern; the shuffle of paperwork and the fact that only Sarah knew he was waiting for the results was a welcome change. They had a new case that morning, a reason to be out on investigation, and if nothing else, Erik had always been talented at throwing himself into work. The case distracts him from the approach of afternoon and his impending disappointment.

It's also Sarah who drives him out to the clinic, on a late lunch; Sarah who idles the department car nearby the entrance, so he can make a quick escape.

There's a large part of him wishing it were Charles waiting in the car, of course. But the twenty-five percent chance weighs too heavily, and he knows he's made the right decision. Sarah pats his stomach for good luck, casually ignoring his glare. He heads in, already dreading the waiting room.

He's seen far too much of this place already. The casually vacant-looking receptionist waves from behind the comic he's reading with a lazy "hey, Mr. L," and it's all Erik can do not to crush him between a few filing cabinets. He glares at the fish, the parenting magazines, the board books, and that couple from before--now holding a baby--before Moira herself shows up at the receptionist's desk and tells him to stop and get back to the office.

Legs feeling heavy as he walks down the hall, he tries to ignore how much it feels like he's walking toward his sentencing.

Moira's tiny office is cluttered with journals and texts. He sits uncomfortably in one of the chairs across the desk from her, arms crossed to keep his hands from his stomach.

"Well?" he asks. "Did the results arrive on time?"

Moira lifted a small envelope from a stack of papers, tapped it thoughtfully against the desk's surface.

"I wonder," she said, Erik leaning forward. "Perhaps I lost them--"

"Moira," Erik said, sharply. She smiled softly.

"Sorry, Erik. I know how nervous you've been. Here," she offered him the envelope, "they're not the complete results. As you know, it takes more time to run some of the other tests, for trisomy 21 and--"

"That doesn't matter," he interrupts. "You know what I needed this for."

He turns the envelope over in his hands. It's sealed shut, and he runs his fingers over the seams on the back. To learn this from a paper--suddenly, he finds it unthinkable.

"Moira," he eventually says, still staring at the envelope. "Do you know?"

"I thought you would want to read for yourself, Erik."

"Tell me," he finds himself demanding. He may not particularly like her, but either way this turns out, he's going to be seeing a lot more of her. She owes this to him, he thinks, and when she reaches into a file to pull out a folder, his heart starts pounding.

This is it. 

Doctors are so fond of _literature_ , he remembers. He's about to be handed off to a stack of pamphlets and fliers for grief counseling. To be referred to one of those mutant support organizations. Bracing himself, the rush of agitation and anxiety is so overwhelming he only hears the end of what Moira's just said. 

"--so maybe this time you'll have a look."

He frowns at her. The words are meaningless, complete nonsense. 

"What?"

She sighed, putting the folder down in front of him.

"I hope you're listening this time," she says under her breath.

"Erik. Like all mutant parents, you had every right to be concerned, but the fetus does not have Fatal Mutant Syndrome. The results in the envelope are more detailed, but I'll just say now that from all appearances on the ultrasound--and from the information I received from the lab--you have a perfectly healthy baby. So maybe you'll have a look at these images, now."

Shakily, Erik puts the envelope down. 

The detailed results mean knowing if she's mutant or human.

He knows that once, he would have wished only for a mutant child. Being mutant has been such a large part of his identity for so long--what human family he once had by now a distant memory--that it seems odd to have a baseline-human child.

But now, he finds he only needs to hold onto the letter for Charles. Charles can read it if he likes--given Charles's stance on mutant-human integration, Erik can't imagine him caring--but for Erik, it's immaterial.

The only thing he wants to look at is this, he realizes, holding the folder. He opens it slowly, and looks down at the still, printed off from his ultrasound.

"That's from the first one," Moira says. Again, Erik finds he can barely hear her. The fetus looks so small, obviously younger and less developed than his last child, when he'd lost her. He flips over the picture to look at the ones behind it.

Moira doesn't say anything, then, just letting him look. The fetus is already bigger, in the second picture; and he can't help thinking, _it was only two weeks_. The fetus is still tiny, but knowing that the baby is Charles's, that it's healthy, knowing how happy Charles will be--Erik grins.

Three months pregnant. He lets himself put his hand over the slight bump.

"You look terrifying when you do that, you know."

He keeps grinning as he puts the pictures back in the folder, the unopened results slid in alongside. "Thank you," he replies. "And thank you for these, as well." He closes the folder and stands.

Moira also stands, and for an awkward moment it seems as if they may _hug_. Thankfully, everyone remembers how much mutual distaste is supposed to be in the room before anything of the sort occurs.

"You'll be back in a month," she demands, "for your next prenatal check-up. And you'll bring Charles."

"Of course. We're soon going to be seeing enough of each other to _require_ a mediator."

Moira shakes her head and opens the office door, shooing him out. He's only a month's reprieve from this office, but at least he's got an escape vehicle waiting--and he has the knowledge that he won't need the more immediate appointment he was fearing.

He slides into the passenger seat, the folder on his lap. Sarah looks between it and him.

"Well?" she demands.

Wordlessly, he passes over the folder.

"Apparently perfectly healthy," he says, feeling an odd sort of pride. It's not as if he was personally responsible for the selection of the baby's genes.

"Ugh," Sarah replied, tossing back the pictures and putting the car in gear. "Looks a little small to me, Lensherr."

"That's how it's _supposed_ to look," he insisted, and quickly found himself trying not to kill his partner when she laughed and told him it wasn't the first time she'd heard that from a man.

The department zeroed in on the folder the minute they came back from lunch, and no amount of sealing the metal of his desk could entirely defend it from them. By the time he got off work at five, Detective Muñoz and the city's only mutant parking attendant have, between them, demolished his desk to get to the pictures and pass them around. Erik would have been angrier, were it not such a coordinated and impressive display of their powers.

As for the envelope, he's all but ignored it. It's only on his way home that he remembers it again, thinking about how he'll tell Charles.


	6. Chapter 6

He could just offer Charles the envelope. Certainly, it would be less work than thinking of something to say.

"I'm pregnant" sounded too dramatic, in an after-school special sort of way, factual though it may be. "We're having a baby" was far too cheesy, as were most things he could say; "you're a father," anything along those lines. 

Erik couldn't imagine Charles being pleased with him conveying Sarah's message of "tell your husband congrats on his superpowered sperm." 

When he got home, Charles was already there. Though it was his day off, Erik had been half-expecting Charles would spend another day with his sister. Erik could sense his chair in the office, hear the soft clatter of the laptop's keys. Shuffling the folder between his hands as he did so, he took off his coat, put aside his wallet and phone.

Whatever Charles was working on, he was immersed in it. Usually he would at least say hello telepathically, and the silence was disquieting. Erik glanced down at the folder and considered if he should take it in with him.

 _I'll say something_ , Erik told himself. _It's not as if I'm going to just throw this on the keyboard._ He needed to bring it; the minute Charles knew there was an ultrasound, he'd want to see the stills. He would only wonder why Erik left it in the living room. With the folder in hand, Erik walked down the hall and leaned in the open door of the office.

Charles was still typing. He looked tired, as he usually did when frowning at the laptop through his glasses; but Erik knew he was personally responsible for many of the lines under Charles's eyes. Coming in the room, he put a hand on Charles's shoulder, rubbing firmly at a knot of muscle.

Whenever Charles was worried, he tended to oscillate between trying to study the problem and trying to do anything possible to avoid it. By all appearances, he was now stuck on the latter mode. 

Absently, Charles glanced up. 

"Oh, hello, darling," he said, before turning back to the screen. 

Erik shoved down the wave of frustration rising in him, concentrated as single-mindedly as he could on easing the tension in Charles's neck. It wasn't as if his own coping mechanisms weren't slightly maladjusted.

It also wasn't as if Charles was actually ignoring him. That much was obvious from the muted tension of Charles's emotions eddying against his shields, from the hurried way Charles finished typing out his message to whoever it was he was writing, from the state of the muscles in his shoulders. Awkwardly leaning against the desk, one hand on Charles and the other clutching that folder, Erik struggled to just _say it_. To say anything, even if it meant blurting out "we have less than six months to clean up the spare room."

After a long moment, though--waiting for Charles to finish, to look back up at him--he could only manage to say one thing.

"The tests came back." And quickly, because the weight of Charles's concern had become crushing and painful, he added that they were normal. He faltered over the word. 

Being pregnant at all was not exactly his normal state of being. He had to correct himself. 

"We're all right, Charles."

Mentally, he flinched and waited for Charles to note the slip. A new pronoun wasn't the best way to tell Charles, but--but at least it was done.

"I'm glad," Charles said. He'd turned away from the computer, and he reached up to squeeze Erik's hand.

Still, Charles seemed exhausted. Drained. He gave a bit of a sigh, and made to wheel back from the desk. Erik let his hand fall from Charles's shoulder and backed off. Behind his own careful shielding, he cursed that Charles chose _today_ to become obtuse.

Charles was stalling by the desk, and Erik warred with the instinct to stop him.

"Whatever it was, I hope you'll find it in you to tell me at some time."

"I'm trying," Erik said. He gestured with his free hand. "Just let me--"

"You're still _blocking_ me, Erik," Charles interrupted, voice sharp. "When you know I have always honored your privacy, you treat me as a stranger." Charles laughed, a humorless broken noise. "Worse," he added. He wasn't looking up, and Erik felt his own chest clench.

No one's patience was infinite.

"Charles," Erik started. He stepped close again, about to reach out, when he hesitated. "I'm sorry."

"It's not..." Charles trailed off, rubbed at his face with one hand. "It's something we should speak about later," he finished. 

Erik wondered what he'd been about to say. _It's not enough_. He nodded his agreement, and apologized once more, frozen with indecision and by the lack of Charles in his mind.

"Later, Erik," Charles repeated. "Whenever you're ready. For now, just--let's just get through tonight. I need to finish a few more letters," Charles was forever having to petition some government agency or another on behalf of his clients, "There's still leftovers, if you want. And don't forget it's the second Monday."

Erik had wanted to interrupt, to say he was ready now. But he wasn't sure Charles wanted to hear anything else from him for a few days. He was queasy with the perhaps-irrational thought that Charles may not ever want to hear anything from him.

Whatever Charles said, he'd go along with it, he thought. 

Up to a point.

Immediately after they'd moved in together, they had formed what was regarded among their friends as the city's strictest chore schedule. It was the only way Erik had felt he would ever survive Charles's somewhat lax notions on tidiness. Likely, Charles had agreed only because it insured him a meal that didn't originate from a box, every other day.

Two Mondays of the month, the chore schedule demanded the scrubbing of Langy's litter box. Second Mondays were Erik's, and he had always found the chore disagreeable. It was, after all, Charles's cat. 

Which was how--upset as Charles may be--Erik unthinkingly leapt for the excuse to shirk litter box duty.

"I'm sorry, but I can't clean up after your cat," he said, smug. As soon as the words were out, he regretted it.

He had just stumbled into what was quite possibly the all-time worst way to tell your spouse you were pregnant.

A little late now. Erik certainly wasn't optimistic enough to believe Charles would remain ignorant forever, and he slowly began to lower his shielding.

"You were the one who said you were fine, and now you can't clean up after--" Charles started, annoyance sharpening his voice, when he stopped and just stared.

"'We,'" he repeated. "Earlier, you said 'we.'"

Tentative, Charles brushed his thoughts against Erik's own. His mind was vibrant with a sort of cautious joy, and Erik gave him a small smile.

"I did," he agreed. "This isn't how I wanted to tell you, and I hated making you wait this long. But," before the words could come out of Charles's mouth--his thoughts alone were loud enough--Erik pulled out the envelope and thrust it into Charles's hands. "I needed the test, first. I couldn't tell you until I knew for certain."

The envelope looks like it's about to fall from Charles's fingers, and he's still just looking at Erik, stunned. "Erik, you're preg--"

"Just open it," Erik interrupts, fidgeting again with the folder. He just wants Charles to see the results for himself, now, so Charles will never know that terrible uncertainty. So he can just know Erik's pregnant, and be glad for their chance at having a healthy child. He wants to give Charles the photos, now. To get Charles on the couch and hold him--let Charles feel the small swell of his stomach, as he knows Charles will--and possibly kiss him until Erik's forgiven for the last few weeks.

Charles smiles a little, turns the envelope over in his hands. "So, this was what had you so nervous," he says. He looks back up at Erik. "I still wish you'd told me earlier," he adds, beginning to neatly lift the flap.

"I understand, but I couldn't make you wait," Erik replied. Charles is pulling the paper out, unfolding it. "I wanted you to have the results, so we can just move on," he added.

Charles had to understand. He had enough clients, certainly. Didn't they talk to their therapist about this, the intolerable wait for the genetic testing? Silent, Erik waited as Charles read over the results. He wondered absently what else was on there; what other results had come through, if any. He couldn't tell much from the back of the paper, and he was impatient for Charles to finish, for his mind to go brilliant with happiness.

Instead, there was a long, dreadful pause. Charles's mind was a blank. And, slowly, he lowered the paper.

"Oh, darling," he said, but it sounded wrong. Erik's legs felt weak. "I am sorry."

No, Erik thought. It was the only thing he _could_ think.

 _No_. Moira had said... Were these the true results, had there been an error?

"Erik. _Erik_ ," he heard, the sound of Charles's voice distant. "Please, just sit down. Erik--"

Heavily, he let himself fall into the desk chair Charles pulled around behind him. The folder dropped to the floor, his fingers numb; he felt Charles's hands grab urgently at his own, felt him try and flood his mind with calm.

"Hush," Charles was saying. Erik could barely hear him over the rush of his own pulse, and he kept staring at the paper in Charles's lap. "Slow your breathing. There. That's it."

"I didn't want you to know," Erik said. His voice was thick, his body heavy, as if submerged. "I had Moira tell me, but there must have been a mistake. I thought," he paused, swallowing. Idiot he was, he'd let himself believe the fetus would survive. "I truly thought we were healthy," he finished.

"You are," Charles said, gently. He was rubbing his thumbs slowly over the backs of Erik's hands. Though neither of them were shielding, Erik couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"But not her," he said, wretched enough that he couldn't help the pronoun. "I never wanted you to go through this, Charles." _It was enough I went through it once_ , he thought. _The mutation will kill her in weeks--_

Charles's hands tightened, hard. "Wait. Erik--"

"Don't worry. I'll call Moira again," he said. Erik had thought enough about this possibility that he could go through the steps, completely numb.

 _I don't believe you need to,_ Charles sent. _You misunderstood me, and for that I must apologize. Please, calm yourself._

"Misunderstood?" he echoed, feeling lost.

Charles gently extracted one hand, and picked up the results again. "I didn't realize how afraid you were, of carrying a fetus with Terminal--" he stopped, "--with that condition. I take it you never looked at the rest of the results, yourself.”

"No."

The paper was passed back over to Erik, but the letters refused to line up in any sort of legible fashion.

"Erik, the fetus isn't mutant at all," Charles eventually tells him. Erik looked up from the results, and Charles met his eyes. "It was always a possibility, and I feared that, given your views on separatism, perhaps--"

"It's _our child_ ," Erik interrupted. He couldn't exactly be upset, they've had one too many arguments about mutant separatist movements to begrudge Charles for the concern. "Ours," he repeated, tossing the results on the desk to grip Charles's hands again. "Whatever her genes, it doesn't matter. This is our family," he said, grinning when Charles beamed at him. "Culturally, she'll be no less mutant."

The joy he'd been waiting for flooded the room, and Charles laughed as he tugged Erik against his chair, pulling him into a tight hug. "Cultural mutantism?" he asked, sounding incredulous.

"Credit me on the journal article," Erik replied. He nuzzled up Charles's neck before letting himself be guided into a deep, desperate kiss. With one hand, Charles was pressing him close by the back of his head; with the other, he was gripping at Erik's low back. Slowly, as they kissed, Charles let his hand slide around over Erik's side. Erik smiled against Charles's lips.

"Go ahead," he whispered. "Though there's not much there, yet."

Charles's palm was warm, splayed out over the little bump, and Erik reached down to rest his own hand over Charles's. He pulled back a little to see Charles's face, flushed from kissing, eyes a bit wide. "I can't wait until you're huge," he joked, before looking thoughtful. 

"To tell you the truth, I almost can't believe it," he admitted. "We've been waiting for so long--"

"I thought it was impossible, myself," Erik agreed. He looked down at their hands over his stomach. He didn't appear pregnant in the least, and if he'd not seen the pictures and had a few needles in his abdomen, he'd think it all was a dream. Remembering the folder again, he ignored Charles's protests and sat up.

Picking the images up off the floor, he couldn't stop grinning as he handed them to Charles. "Here. Moira says it looks as if I'm three and a half months along."

It was several minutes before Charles was able to do anything else than stare at the pictures. Eventually he managed to say "Oh, my darling--how lovely." Erik leaned down to kiss him again, when it looked like he was able to notice anything else than the ultrasound.

"Of course the baby's lovely," he said, "It's yours. Now, how about something a little more celebratory than leftovers?"

They went out that night, though Erik still felt a little high. He was pregnant. With a probably-healthy fetus. With Charles's probably-healthy fetus. And Charles knew, and was happy. 

More accurately, Charles knew and was now ecstatic and gloating, and the minute they were seated at the restaurant he'd already started in with how radiant Erik looked.

 _Here we go_ , Erik thought, _welcome to the next six months of your life_. Bloated and radiant, that's what he had to look forward to, and he let Charles add on appetizers and deserts. He spent the time waiting for the meal with his hand in Charles's, silently daring anyone at the restaurant to look at them.

"This is our neighborhood, Erik," Charles eventually chided, "I would say we could go elsewhere for you to find someone with which to pick a fight, but...”

Erik sighed, feeling a brush of _smug_ from across the table. Charles had a point--this part of town, no one would blink even when he'd be waddling around months from now, hand-in-hand with Charles--and Erik felt the sneaking suspicion that Charles would ensure he spent the next few months avoiding all conflict.

"But I deserve an early night in, I think," he finished for Charles, right as the waiter brought the food. He smirked as Charles blushed, and he let go of Charles's hand. If it was a little odd to preen while shoveling food down, well--Charles's fault for watching him like that. And their relationship was rarely anything but odd.

They detoured through the park on the way home. The evening was chilly, but Charles seemed enthusiastic about the idea of fresh air, and Erik wasn't feeling rushed for this day to end. They spoke endlessly of the plans to get rid of the junk in the spare room, of the next appointment with Moira, of how they were going to tell everyone. Erik reluctantly admitted the department had found out on their own, and Charles grinned at the story of the destruction to Erik's desk.

It was hard to believe that he'd waited so long to tell Charles, and when they were almost out of the park, Erik leaned down to kiss him again.

"You know I still fear it. Losing the child," he said. That much must be obvious, even to someone without Charles's powers. "But even should that happen, I know that right now I've never been happier. Being by your side, having a family with you--it's everything to me, Charles."

Charles clutched at him, face pressed wet against Erik's. _We'll have our family. We already do._

_Erik, I promised you before, and I promise you again--we face this together, my love. You and I._


	7. Chapter 7

Though it was still early when they got back in the apartment, they went right to the bedroom. Erik stripped off before Charles, shivering a little in the cold. Charles traced slowly down over his nude abdomen, and Erik felt himself shudder for another reason entirely.

"Hurry it up," he urged, using his powers to nudge Charles slightly towards the en suite. Charles shook his head and asked if Erik planned to be so demanding the entire pregnancy--Erik was inclined to think he was the one knocked up, he could ask for whatever he liked--but went off to get prepared for bed. Erik waited under the covers, wondering absently how he'd feel in a month, in three. The androgen blockers often built up by then, or so he'd read. Maybe he wouldn't want this at all. Under the blankets, he stroked slowly at his cock. 

All the more reason to enjoy it while he could.

 _Impatient_ , Charles sent, and Erik concentrated on how much he wished Charles would get in bed already. It was only a few moments before Charles was where Erik needed him--naked and pulling himself up to lean over Erik's stretched-out body. He was already half-hard, and Erik rumbled in appreciation, settling his hands on Charles's hips.

"So eager," Charles remarked, grinning. "Come here, then. What's the rush?"

Smirking, Erik rolled himself on top of Charles, tilting his ass up into Charles's roaming touch. "I want you in me as much as possible before I get fat enough to crush you," he said, deadpan.

Laughing, Charles told him to get the lube. "And stop worrying about the physics," he added, "We'll figure it out as we go along."

Again, Charles was slow and thorough with him. Erik wanted to accuse him of being overly gentle--he was pregnant, not ill--but he enjoyed the gradual burn of arousal and affection. When Charles finally pulled his fingers out, Erik sank back on his cock with almost as much patience as Charles was showing. Letting his long legs cross behind Charles's back, he steadied his hands on the headboard. He started riding Charles in an easy rhythm, taking his time to play with and bite at Charles's chest. 

Even then, Charles couldn't seem to keep his hands off Erik's belly.

 _Does that turn you on_ , Charles sent, curiosity heavy in the words, _thinking of me having you, when you're already pregnant?_

Erik groaned as Charles brushed a thumb over one of his nipples. Were they more sensitive, already?

He couldn't exactly imagine being able to ride Charles like this when he was about to give birth. But he closed his eyes, anyway, and immersed himself in Charles's excitement. _Heavy with Charles's child already, Charles on him, hard with the knowledge that Erik is his, completely--_

 _Yes, you're mine. You would be even without this,_ and his hands stroked firm over the growing bump, _but you like that--that everyone will look at you and_ know-- _you want it, don't you?_

Moaning his agreement, Erik's motions became wild, rhythmless. Whatever his hormonal state in a few months, for now he wanted nothing more than to revel in this. _Yours, yours, yours_ , his mind sang, and Charles's arms tightened around him.

 _Yes_ , Charles thought again. His emotions were stronger, more raw in Erik's head, his control slipping. _And I'm yours. Oh, love..._

Clumsy with lust, Erik wasn't able to do much more than grind against Charles's prick and suck random kisses against his chest. To his surprise, all the same--perhaps it was just that Charles's mind was now wrapped fiercely around his own--soon Charles was clutching him tight, stilling his hips and thrusting him down hard. Flushed, his head tilted back, Charles moaned his name once more, low and broken, and Erik could only pant and hold on. Come was pulsing slow into his ass, and he blushed a little thinking, _he's pregnant, pregnant and well-fucked_ again. It's absolute perfection, and Charles will have him like this for months.

When Charles begins stroking him off--murmuring a quick apology, to which Erik shakes his head and sends back a wave of the sheer pleasure that had just left him panting--he barely needs it. Charles jerks him firmly as he comes, other hand still tight on Erik's back to hold him steady, and Charles's chest is soon flecked with come.

He's still catching his breath, riding the pleasant twitches of aftershock, when Charles begins kissing him again, slow and reverent. _Beautiful_ , Charles is thinking. Erik would disagree, but it seems too great an effort. After a moment, he finds enough coordination to pull himself off of Charles and lay against his side. He's not surprised when he feels the careful swipe of a now-cold washcloth between his thighs--Charles is now locked firmly in Doting Mode. Erik's too tired to do more than grumble at the treatment.

At least he's gotten out of cleaning the litterbox.

"Mmm, I'll think of more chores for you," Charles says, pulling up the blankets and arranging himself to nuzzle close. Erik smiles, feeling one of Charles's hands rest in a rather predictable location.

"Such as?" Erik asks. "I imagined you'd be spoiling me until early September."

"Well, first off, there's all the eating--"

"Charles, I'm not having twins."

Charles grinned and rubbed over the little bump. "Whoever's in there will surely love a few siblings. Maybe next time.”

Reaching out lazily with his powers to put out the lights, Erik realized he'd never imagined a next time. He'd only today come to terms with _this_ time.

"I'd wait until this one hatches to count any chicks at all," he warned. Charles shifted to look at him.

"I'm sure that sounded better in translation," he joked, before glancing down at Erik's stomach. "You think of the baby as 'she.' But you don't know yet."

"No," Erik agreed. He couldn't meet Charles's eyes.

"Erik, if it's too painful..."

"I've always meant to tell you," he said, hastily. _It just never seemed the right time,_ he thought, _and when you spoke of wanting children..._

He couldn't complete the sentence, but he knew the emotion came through, anyway. 

Charles sat up beside him.

"You blamed yourself," he said, "through all those tests, all those procedures--you thought it your fault. My god, Erik--"

"Don't say it. I know it's not logical, Charles. I know I shouldn't, but the fact remains that..." he trailed off, unable to say the rest, _and I've never told you, all this time._

And before he could finish, the words flashed through his mind, sharp with anger and grief.

_You were fifteen!_

Startled, Erik scrambled to sit up and face Charles.

"You know."

"Not everything," Charles said, voice unsteady. "But enough to know you were--" he stopped, sensing Erik's emotions, "--you were never at fault."

Even if he hadn't said it, or even thought it in a way that Erik could sense, the word was still there, a weight between them. Erik knew better than anyone that was the right word for what had happened, all those years ago. He didn't know if he was ready to hear Charles say it; if he'd ever be able to hear Charles say it.

He asked Charles how long he'd known.

 _For years_ , Charles sent, his voice tinged with regret, _The first night I stayed, your nightmares..._

Erik laughed, brokenly. "So you did know, all this time."

"I'm sorry, Erik. It was never my intention to hide it from you.

"No, it's a relief," he managed. _That I don't need to explain._

 _Have you ever talked about it, to anyone?_ Charles asked. 

_Ever the shrink. And no,_ Erik thought at him. It was in the past--he'd always had enough to worry about, without the shadows of his history.

"It would help, you know," Charles said. _Can't imagine what that decision must have been like, particularly for a child,_ he was thinking, and Erik wasn't entirely certain it was meant to be shared.

He corrected Charles, all the same. _I would have made it anyway, but you know the decision wasn't entirely mine_ , he sent.

And Charles's mind flooded with anger. _It wasn't enough that he made you--_

Erik blinked, momentarily confused, before he remembered what Charles had said earlier. Not everything, but enough.

"The decision was made for me, but not by... _that_ ," he said, looking away. He could feel the press of curiosity, but even knowing that Charles was aware of that day, it was not an easy thing to put into words.

"You've wondered why I waited for the results, why I think of this child as a girl," he added, finally.

 _If you need to, you're free to look,_ Erik thought.

Being drawn against Charles wasn't a surprise, and--letting himself rest his face against the curve of Charles's neck--he closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the intensity of Charles's concern.

Painful though it was, Erik opened his mind to those memories, trying to show Charles everything. He couldn't know what Charles had already seen in dreams, so all he could, he remembered. Waking up, morning after morning, ill; heading off to school anyway, the alternative unthinkable. The steady swell of his abdomen--showing much earlier on a gawky teenager--that he resolutely ignored, hid with oversized sweaters. The sick comfort he took in the idea he might have cancer, might have an out from that place. The slow comprehension of a school nurse and the clinic visits to follow, "Don't wait so long to come in," and "remember your protection next time," and the insistence on an ultrasound "before you make any hasty decisions". Recoiling from the first glimpse of her, tiny heart beating normally, only--

_Erik!_

Taking in an unsteady breath, he realized how tightly Charles was holding him, how pale Charles looked. He didn't want to know how badly _he_ must look.

"That wasn't very controlled," he managed to say. Usually he did a better job of sharing memories with Charles, kept from getting caught up in the emotions of the past.

"It's all right," Charles said, unsteadily. _I never realized._ He held Erik no less tightly, let Erik press his face against Charles's shoulder. Let his affection and concern suffuse the room, even when Erik pulled away moments later, uncomfortable and gruff.

Exhausted as he was, as much as he'd like the excuse of sleep to avoid any further conversation, Erik lay silently awake for a long time after. He could feel Charles watching him, but he kept his back turned. When minutes passed and Charles stayed silent, still projecting calm and just waiting for him, he sent back gratitude. When Charles shifted closer, he turned and let himself be tugged closer, against Charles's side.

Sparing his attention for the alarm clock, he realized it was only ten-thirty. It felt hours later, and yet he still couldn't sleep.

Their hands met again over his abdomen.

"You thought of a name," Charles said. Erik couldn't deny it--he'd thought of it late one night, weeks ago, but it was only today that he let himself connect it to the fetus.

"We can think of a new one, together," he offered, and Charles laughed.

"I'm hardly capable of vetoing a name I've not yet heard."

"It'll only pertain if it is a girl," Erik said, "but I thought perhaps we could name her Anya."

"Anya," Charles repeated. He patted the bump again. "Hello in there, Anya," he said, cheerfully.

"We don't know it's Anya _yet_ ," Erik protested. "Think of something creative for a contingency plan."

"Anya, you should hear your father. Contingency names, that's all your poor dad can give you--"

"Why do you get to be 'Dad'?" Erik asked, grinning.

Charles told his answer to Erik's stomach. "Because I'm the fun parent, right? Father is so brooding and serious, always standing around in doorways with his turtlenecks."

"Don't listen to him, Anya. I'm the fun parent. I'll teach you how to hot-wire cars and shoot guns, he'll only tell you to do your chemistry homework. And if you lie, he'll _know_." 

"Hey!"

Erik laughed and squeezed Charles's hand. "I'm fine with 'father'. Now stop talking to my stomach. I don't think the fetus even has ears, yet."

"Sure she does. They form in the first trimester," Charles said. It figured he would know. Erik resigned himself to being the third party in a great many conversations to follow.

"Anya," Charles said again, as if feeling it out. "Derived from Hannah, isn't it? 'God has favored me with child.'" 

"Charles--" Erik started.

 _It's perfect. Lovely,_ Charles sent, and he kissed Erik to interrupt.

Possibly, they'd need that conversation--secular though Erik may be, he wasn't sure he wanted his mother haunting him for raising his kids that way.

They'd need a great many conversations, for that matter...

 _You'll have to buy more turtlenecks,_ Charles sent. 

"Quit keeping me awake," Erik grumbled. "We'll be sleepless long enough as it is, once she's out of here."

They'd have months to talk about this all, or so he hoped. Erik settled in with Charles wrapped around him, and finally drifted off to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Difficult as the first months were, Erik never expected an easy pregnancy.

In several ways, it wasn't. He was on edge constantly, impatient for yet annoyed by the prenatal appointments, ready to pick a fight with anyone who did anything that had the slightest risk of endangering his child. He couldn't stop reading about how it could still go wrong, a list of medical terms he'd memorized by month four: nuchal cord, pre-eclampsia, abruptio placentae. It took Charles and Moira sitting him down with a stack of research studies on the effects of extended emotional stress on a fetus to make him stop; mutant pregnancies were strongly correlated with low birth weight babies as it was, and the likeliest suspect was the stress of being mutant. At a certain point, even Erik had to admit it was less than helpful to sit up every night reading about cord prolapse, and made a conscious--if unsuccessful--attempt to relax.

It became easier after he got into the fifth month. There was cases of babies surviving in ICU environments after being born at twenty-one weeks, he'd read. Though it was statistically unlikely for a fetus to survive such a premature birth, it was still a small comfort, and Erik started to think of every week in terms of how it improved her odds. The prenatal visits were always optimistic. He was growing, and he'd stopped feeling miserable. Even if he had to shell out for a new wardrobe and had to put up with the ribbing of the department as he began to show, he felt better than he had in months.

Charles accused him of being high on hormones. It wasn't unlikely, but--as he often would point out to Charles--he wasn't the one who decided to begin single-handedly painting the spare room. 

It had been springtime, and all the windows were open to diffuse the smell of chemicals when Erik had come home that day. Twenty weeks along, his sense of smell was sensitive, but at least it wasn't bothered by paint. He'd come into the room to see Charles arguing with a paint-roller, and most of the walls completely transformed.

"Ah, Erik! What do you think?" Charles had asked, dropping the roller. "I'm afraid I couldn't quite manage the trim, but Raven will be by soon."

"It is very... Orange," he had managed.

"Yes, numerous studies have shown that orange stimulates brain activity."

"I thought we wanted the baby to _sleep_ in this room," Erik had mumbled. But Charles had looked so keen on the idea, Erik wound up agreeing despite himself.

It wasn't as if magenta was an option. And, once dried, the paint wasn't _horrible._

Not a week after that day, Erik first began to feel movement. Between the remodeling and the little kick he was given while at the shooting range, he finally began to feel as if he was actually going to have this kid.

Of course, there were other hurdles in between him and the kid's birth. The appointment when Moira prodded at him and he gripped Charles's hand, uncomfortable, until she declared he wasn't one of the number of male mutants able to birth without surgical intervention. The news wasn't unexpected--between the scar tissue and how narrow his hips were, he hadn't expected otherwise--and it was not entirely unwelcome. All the same, it was one more thing to be concerned over. Finding a surgeon, a hospital, setting the date--ultimately, Erik had to let Charles and Moira do it all, because he kept finding faults with the inevitably-human practitioners. Having a set day for his child's birth was strange.

September fifth, he'd think over and over. September fifth.

He also had to survive the baby shower. Raven insisted on one, and late that July he found himself out in Raven and Irene's small back yard, balancing a plate on his massive stomach and glaring at anyone who dared comment. Everyone found out about the party, of course, so he also had to open a massive amount of presents from the entire department, everyone Charles had ever co-authored a paper with, and roughly ten percent of the city's mutant community besides.

"Tiny socks," he would say, for the fifteenth time.

 _Say thank you,_ Charles would send, frowning, and every time, Erik did. At least it wasn't a heap of books on kegel exercises, like Frost had decided he needed. Sixteen sets of baby socks, five bottles of baby shampoo, several board books, and a very small but highly functional crossbow later, Erik and Charles would finally be allowed to retreat.

"That was fun," Charles kept saying, as if he hadn't just confiscated Logan's gift and forbidden Erik from mentioning it to Anya, _ever._

Erik had muttered something unkind in disagreement, and beached himself on their couch, rolling on his side. He'd started to feel tired often, but he imagined it was just the heat. Charles had brought him water and a cool cloth, before settling beside him.

"Too warm out?" he had asked, and Erik nodded. The cloth felt heavenly, and he relaxed for a few moments.

After a while, he had to grab Charles's hand and put it on his huge abdomen.

"There," he'd said. "There's your Dad, take it out on him," and the fetus obligingly kicked under Charles's touch. Erik's eyes were closed, but he could tell Charles was grinning like mad, before a burst of surprise went through Charles's mind.

"What is it?" he'd asked, opening his eyes and sitting up. "What's wrong--"

"I can feel it," Charles had said. He sounded astonished.

"You've felt the baby move before."

"No, I mean--I can _feel_ the baby," he'd said, waving at his temple. Erik grabbed at Charles's hand, tightly.

"What is she thinking? What's it like?"

"It's rudimentary, no proper thoughts as such," Charles had said, "I suppose a little like reading Langy. Just a presence. I've never felt an unborn child, I didn't know I could." He had shook his head, and smiled up at Erik. "It feels... Like contentment, Erik."

Erik grinned, amazed. "She should be," he'd said, "free room and board."

It had been so pleasant that evening that when Moira threw Erik on bed rest at the next appointment early the following week, he had almost been expecting it. No pleasant moment had ever lasted him long. 

Apparently male mutants were susceptible to going in to premature labor, and Moira believed the excessive fatigue Erik had been experiencing--Charles had been calling her with regular updates, usually when Erik was already asleep--might be indicative of a risk to him and the baby. If it could be helped, she wanted him to keep the September appointment.

He'd been working up until then, and though it wasn't really a hardship--working for the police, he had decent benefits, and merely the accumulation of sick time alone could have lasted the entire pregnancy--it was galling to think he'd be just laying in bed for the next month.

 _Every week improves her chances_ , he'd remind himself. And it was true that the city wasn't getting any cooler. The department threw a going-away party, and Sarah gave him an awkward one-armed hug when she deposited him home.

Reading, napping, getting the last touches on the apartment finished--Erik's days became slow and lazy, something he welcomed at first. He hadn't realized how drained he actually was until given a few days off.

By the second week of bed rest, he was certain he'd gone insane. He only hoped it was the hormones, and nothing permanent.

The highlight of his days were when Charles came home. Sleeping nude, sprawled out on his side, one arm thrown out toward Charles's pillow, he'd wake to a happy spark of _interest_ from Charles's mind.

"Morning, beautiful," Charles had purred at him, one day.

"It's five. PM," Erik had said, pulling the sheet over his belly from where it had become rucked around his hips. "And I feel hideous."

"Cramping?" Charles had asked, concern obvious. "Is it painful?"

"Not that," Erik replied. He was aroused, depressed, and extremely self-conscious all at once. Hormones, he told himself sternly. It's just the hormones, and your brain is not functioning normally. Don't say anything stupid.

"I haven't seen my cock in _months_." 

He could tell immediately that Charles was trying not to laugh, and he tugged the sheet tighter around himself, feeling bizarrely distressed. "Darling, it's still very much there," Charles soothed. He transferred onto the bed, sorting himself to sit up by Erik. "I can show you, if you like--"

"It's shrunk, hasn't it," Erik had said dejectedly before he could stop the words. _Ignore me, my brain has been taken over by chemicals_ , he thought.

"You could lose five inches and no one would notice--Erik! My god. I didn't mean it. Darling, you look ravishing," Charles promised, and pressed an image of how he'd seen Erik when he'd first come in the room into Erik's mind.

Much of the image was focused, unsurprisingly, on Erik's swollen abdomen. Large and heavy, Charles was often taken with the dark line trailing down from Erik's navel. Charles was always tracing it with his tongue before taking Erik in his mouth, and he was just as generous with Erik's nipples now--darker, and so much more sensitive.

 _I know you're feeling out of sorts, but you're still beautiful,_ Charles sent. _And, see?_

Erik flushed as Charles thought--in detail--of how Erik's cock looked against his thigh, soft but still as thick as ever. Like most men in late pregnancy, he hadn't been able to become erect for a few weeks. He was no less interested in sex, and he pushed down the sheet and lifted his thigh.

"Greedy," Charles said, grinning. "Look at you. Won't even roll over to look at your poor husband to ask for it."

 _Get to work_ , his brain had helpfully sent, and he had to go back and temper it with his affection as Charles laughed, and, blessedly, pressed a finger inside.

The third week of August, he'd gone mad from being indoors too long. Charles was at work. Sarah was at work. Logan was at work. 

Everyone in the damn world was at work, save for Erik-really-fucking-pregnant-Lensherr.

So far that week, he'd built a crib, a changing table, two bookshelves and a dresser. All within a few feet of the bed, of course, so he hadn't violated Moira's absurd restrictions.

He'd also cleaned every window, trimmed the cat's nails, dusted every surface in Charles's office, and was rapidly becoming certain the bathroom needed an emergency recaulking before the baby was born.

He finally left his contemplation of the caulk situation to check the fridge for the fifth time that day. It was very thoughtfully stocked. He opened a container of Charles's pesto spinach salad, and ate a few forkfuls before deciding it needed tomatoes. 

The fridge also, he soon discovered, contained a smaller container with a post-it that read, "Should you want your salad with tomatoes." 

With a little smile drawn on it.

Erik cursed as he transferred tomatoes into the first container. Pine nuts, that's what it was lacking, he thought.

Somewhere in his mind, a memory came up. _Pine nuts are in the cupboard._ It was one of those little triggered mental recordings Charles could place. Great. He thought of everything else that he would feasibly want in the salad--feta, chicken, onions, mushrooms, even cranberries--and all were somehow accounted for, somewhere in the kitchen.

Erik ate the salad as spitefully as possible.

There had to be _something_ they needed at the store. _Anything_. Charles wouldn't be home for five hours, surely he'd understand if Erik went out. 

It couldn't be healthy for the fetus, keeping indoors for a month.

After a thorough search, Erik decided there wasn't any orange juice. He'd become sick of orange juice during the second trimester, but by this point he'd grown weary of grapefruit juice every damn morning. He'd just go to the grocery store two blocks over and back, and--as a bonus--Charles would see this lockdown was patently ridiculous.

Few of Erik's clothes fit, by now. Usually he just wore boxers or pajama bottoms with the waists let out, and a robe. But he did have a few maternity shirts that Charles had altered for Erik's shoulders, and he pulled up his only pair of trousers that were suitable for public. Figuring out shoes again was strangely daunting, given the giant growth between him and his feet, but eventually he was out in the hall and locking the door.

It was sweltering out, and Erik almost regretted his decision immediately. Luckily, everyone kept glancing at his stomach and before realizing who they were staring at, and backing off. It was rather satisfying--pregnant or not, he still had it.

In the mid-afternoon, the grocery store was largely empty. He walked around, inspecting everything, enjoying the air conditioning and his freedom. He hadn't been outside for weeks, and it was liberating, even if it was a little uncomfortable.

He steadied his free hand on his belly.

Very uncomfortable, actually. The baby had apparently taken the opportunity to practice gymnastics in there, throwing a few good kicks in at his internal organs in the process. Erik waited for her to settle before continuing along, picking up the juice.

His back was killing him, he realized. Standing in line, the baby began acting up again, and he started to curse whatever impulse it was that made him go out.

The cramping continued as he walked home. He took slow, steadying breaths, and tried to ignore it. He'd had a few false-alarm contractions last week, annoying but nothing outside of the norm.

This was no different.

Not different at all, he told himself as he got in the elevator, as a new cramp made him wince down the hall. 

As he threw the bolts of the door open, just in time to stumble in, groaning with pain.

Sprawling on the couch, he tried to breathe through the cramp.

Two hours later, he reluctantly admitted to himself that this was quite different than any previous contractions. The pain was radiating over his low back, jolting him no matter how he moved. He groaned as another came on.

They seemed to be coming together quickly, intense and uncomfortable. Moira had said they might, the course of labor was often unpredictable in a mutant male. _It's dangerous for you to labor for more than a few hours, remember that,_ she'd also said. _You'll exhaust yourself and the fetus for nothing. You need the caesarean._

Hands trembling, he'd grabbed his cell phone and called Charles. He wouldn't be happy, Erik thought, but he'd be even less pleased if he found Erik trying to cut himself open in a few hours.


	9. Chapter 9

Minutes later, Sarah picked him up. She also was happy to use the siren "just because she could" as she sped to the hospital, and Erik was brought immediately down to pre-op.

This wasn't the original plan. He lay sweating on a hospital bed, nurses hovering over him and hooking him up to fetal monitors. Erik only hoped that the surgeon Charles had found happened to be on duty, that the staff here had seen a mutant before. Waiting with him, Sarah listened to the doctors when he couldn't.

"It's not a huge emergency, sounds like," Sarah said. "You're still an idiot, but it sounds like you have time. They'll do the rest of the surgery just like planned, it's not like you've gotta get put under and get your whole abdomen sliced clean open."

Erik paled. "Charles. Where the hell is Charles?" he asked again. The amnio was bad enough, he couldn't survive surgeons _cutting him open_. The IV pole by the bed began curving in on itself. He was losing control, he'd only kill--

"Lensherr. Knock it off," Sarah growled. He took a deep breath and concentrated on straightening the pole before anyone noticed. "Charles is going to be here any second, you know it. Not everyone gets a squad car, remember?"

Nodding, Erik tried to relax. They'd made it to the hospital in record time because Sarah liked to floor it and could drive against traffic if she liked.

Charles would be there.

Erik just hoped he'd get there soon.

He could tell the moment Charles arrived. He'd been experiencing Charles's second-hand concern and frustration already, the moment Charles had entered telepathic range, but when Charles actually arrived in the hospital the thoughts took on a more concrete form.

 _Erik?_ Charles asked, before Erik felt the familiar sensation of Charles sliding into Erik's awareness. _Oh, thank god, you're safe._

 _Safe? I'm in_ labor. _They're going to fucking carve me open, Charles, I'm going to--_

_You're going to be just fine, love. Try to take a deep breath--there you go. I need you to stay calm for me, all right? I'll be there shortly, I've already spoke with Moira. Everything's sorted. I'm glad Sarah's with you, let her know she'll be off the hook soon._

_Off the hook? You make it sound as if I'm a chore. It's easy for you to stay calm, you're not about to undergo major abdominal surgery,_ Erik thought, bitterly. Someone was bringing in something with a number of small sharp bits of metal, and Erik was already on edge.

"He's in the elevator now,” Erik said, in answer to Sarah's questioning stare. “He wants you to know you'll soon be free from my _hysteria_ ,” he added. Sarah opened her mouth as if to say something, but the person with the metal things had set it by the bed, and Erik tensed. “What the hell do you--”

"Ignore my partner, it's his first child,” Sarah interrupted. She never wore jewelry, and in that moment, Erik hated her intensely for the fact.

"We just need to start an IV on you, Mr. Lensherr,” the woman said. She looked slightly nonplused, and she began digging through the kit she had been carrying for the supplies.

Maybe she was uncomfortable around mutants. Good, Erik thought viciously. If anything happened to his kid, he knew who to start with.

Obligingly, he thrust out his arm for her. She didn't have any suspicious vials, so she could jab needles in his veins all she liked, as far as Erik was concerned. All the same, he purposefully warped three needles, trying to stall for Charles. These people clearly had some sort of malicious intent, and Erik wanted Charles there to help protect the baby.

Cursing as she tossed aside the first three needles, the nurse started in on the fourth.

He'd been indoctrinated into intimidating hospital staff on the neurological unit of the trauma hospital halfway across town, years ago; when he'd left there, it had been with a begrudging respect for most of the humans that had worked with Charles. It wasn't too late to transfer. He had no idea why Charles and Moira had chosen this dump, and watching this human fumble around, he could only think--maybe they could escape yet.

As he was contemplating it, his stalling paid off. Right as he felt the needle pass under his skin, he heard the door to the pre-op area open, felt _relief_ from Charles.

"Thank god,” Sarah muttered as Charles came in, and she all but ran from where she'd been sitting at Erik's side. Charles ignored her, coming up beside the bed and gripping Erik's free hand.

"Love,” Charles said, and Erik felt himself relax already, despite the fact that he was having a needle shoved in the back of his hand. Charles looked as if he were about to say more, when he glanced away, the way he did when he was reading someone's mind. Erik clenched at him, startled, when Charles raised his fingers to his temple; it was usually a sign he was doing something more invasive than just _reading._

 _Charles?_ he asked, pressing at him. After a moment, Charles opened a connection between the two of them and Sarah.

"Thanks, Mr. Lensherr,” the nurse says, standing after having secured the IV. “It was a pleasure working with you.” It sounds eerily like a recording, and as she leaves, he hears Sarah in their minds.

_The hell you do to her, Xavier?_

_Ah, that,_ Charles thinks. He smiles a little ruefully. _I'm afraid I had to remind her of her professional duties. She just decided that Erik here deserved the same care as any patient, no matter what she thought of his family._

"Homophobe and mutantphobe,” Erik muttered, eyeing the plastic hub of the IV. It looked normal enough. “Typical.”

"Well, it wasn't just that,” Charles admitted. “The thought Sarah here had impregnated you, and I was the poor ignorant human in your polyamorous house of sin.”

 _Erik couldn't cut polyamorous if he tried_ , Sarah thought. Erik frowned, uncertain if she'd meant him to hear or not, but he was quickly distracted by another sharp pain.

Gripping Charles's hand roughly as he groaned through it, he felt a wave of shame at being this debilitated by labor. He'd been in fights before, in a wreck, and he had the scars to show for it.

 _You're afraid for the child,_ Charles sent. He was looking between Erik and the monitor showing the baby's heart rate. _It's normal to feel more pain when you're anxious._

He felt Sarah squeeze his shoulder. “You'll be fine with Charles here, yeah?”

Erik gave a shaky nod, panting through the contraction. Distracting as the pain was, he nearly missed the concerned look her and Charles shared.

"I'll just let the nurse know to come in when I leave,” Sarah said. “Call me when you're done reproducing.”

"Shit,” he said. The contraction had just finished, finally. He tried to get his brain to think of more than _thank fuck that's over._

"Of course we will, Sarah,” Charles replied, smoothly. He reached for her hand, saying “Thank you so very much for helping Erik.”

She tugged back when he made as if he was going to kiss the back of her hand, and shook his hand firmly. Erik laughed.

"None of that misogynistic bullshit, Xavier,” he said, for her. She grinned at him, and punched lightly at his shoulder. Ignoring Charles's flustered expression, she told Erik to mind his archaic but well-meaning husband, and he promised to let her have his desk, should he wind up dying.

And she was off, presumably to talk to a different nurse. Erik angled his head to look at the fetal heart monitor.

"She's all right,” he said. It came out more like a question than he'd hoped.

Charles rubbed over his stomach, the touch warm through the hospital gown. “The baby is fine,” Charles reassured. “They're just needing to come out, soon.” 

"Moira's concerned, that's what you're saying.”

"You've been in labor for how long, Erik? Hours?”

Estimating wasn't easy, but he imagined it had only been four or five hours, by now. Not long, by anyone's standards; but Charles said Moira disagreed.

"Male labor isn't predictable in that way, Erik, he said. “With nowhere for the baby to go... I believe Moira is right to be concerned.” 

A nurse came in, taking his vitals again. Erik felt queasy.

"But she'll be okay," he insisted again, wanting to hear Charles say it. 

If he'd put the baby at risk--

"Mr. Lensherr, your baby is doing just fine,” the nurse interrupted. She pulled the strips of paper from the monitor, and passed one over as she put the others in a stack of papers. She pointed out the baby's heart rate--regular, quick, but normal for a fetus--and how she'd responded to the contraction.

"Right there,” she said, pointing out the slowing of the baby's heart rate, “It's not what we like to see if someone's going to deliver without a c-section. But we'll have you down in the operating room in about a half an hour, and she'd probably be just fine for another few hours yet. We just like to be cautious.”

 _See? We'll be fine, darling_ , Charles thought. Aloud, he asked after the surgeon they had originally scheduled. Luckily, he'd been able to clear the time for them--probably with no small thanks to Moira's intervention.

Trying to relax for that half-hour was, of course, impossible. He sweated through a few more contractions, let himself get prodded and adjusted by whatever staff came through, Charles watching everyone as studiously as Erik once did for him. One jarring contraction started when he had about ten minutes to go, and Erik sat up and gripped at his legs.

"I need to push,” he moaned. All day, doctors and nurses and Charles had been happy to remind him not to push. ”I'm in labor, not an idiot,” he'd groused at the time. Who would try and shove a football through his pelvis? Not him.

But now, he had to strain through it, to bear down and get her out. Charles rubbed at his back, calling his name, sharply.

"You can't,” Charles insisted again. “Erik, stop. It's not safe.”

Sweat was soaking his back, and the contraction made pushing his only impulse. “It's too much,” he groaned, “I have to--”

And, quite suddenly, Erik found he _couldn't_.

" _Charles_ ,” he cried. It hurt incredibly, but soon the contraction abated. Charles held him closely, massaging his back.

_I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry. I don't want you hurt._

_You're strong, Erik_ , Charles thought, brushing Erik's hair back from where it'd stuck to his forehead. _Stronger than you know. You'll be fine, and I'll be with you._

 _Don't go_ , Erik thought. _Please._

_You know I won't, love. Not as long as I can help it._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The majority of the actual medical-procedure birth stuff is in this chapter, so skip if it skeeves you.

When it came time for him to be prepped for surgery, however, there was a moment where Charles couldn't be with him. Erik tried to take it with as much grace as possible.

After unhooking him from the monitors and wheeling him down to the operating room, Erik had to navigate his way down from the hospital bed and head in alone, leaving Charles to get gowned up.

"I don't see why you have to,” Erik complained, anxiously holding his abdomen. “Making you use one of _their_ chairs, it's not right.”

"Darling, it's an operating room,” Charles said, patiently. “There's a reason there's rules for this kind of thing. God knows what I've wheeled this through.” _And I sincerely doubt the entire staff is actually a human-supremacy group in disguise, Erik._

Erik could feel the metal beyond the doors of the OR. None of it felt familiar, either in structure or shape. He didn't particularly like the feel of the wheelchair they'd dug up for Charles, either.

 _I'll only be in it for an hour, then you'll be able to track me with this one again_ , he thought, pulling Erik down. “Behave for them,” he whispered, smiling when Erik snorted in annoyance.

As much as he'd been through the entire backlog of _Babies: Special Delivery_ , as much as he was solidly aware of what he was going to see behind the doors, Erik still wasn't comforted. The room was cold, the table and lights looming prominently; even the small infant scale off to the side seemed ominous, the boxy form of plastic inert to his powers. He let the nurses guide him to sit heavily on the operating table, and reluctantly introduced himself to them and to the surgical tech, the latter of whom was sorting an assortment of foreign instruments.

At least this was his element, he tried to reassure himself. Surrounded by metal, he could make a clean escape, should he need to.

One of the nurses was explaining everything to him, again. The anesthetist would be in soon. He'd have a strong epidural, and be awake the whole time. They'd let him hold the baby right away--they practiced something they liked to call “natural cesareans,” which Erik belatedly remembered as the reason Charles had insisted on this surgeon, this hospital. They'd place a catheter before the surgery, and start him on IV fluids. She'd been a scrub nurse for thirteen years, she said, and she'd assisted with two other male births.

Erik felt himself relax, slightly. Charles's mind was still warm and comforting in the back of his own. He calmly let her untie his gown and stick EKG pads on his back and sides, and hook up the blood pressure cuff.

Charles came in before the anesthetist, thankfully. He looked absurd in scrubs and a hairnet, but Erik grinned wildly to see him as he wheeled himself in to the small perimeter of Father Space the OR provided, near where Erik's head would be when he was lying down.

At the moment, though, Erik was still sitting on the edge of the operating table, gripping it tightly.

 _I'm so excited to meet her_ , Charles sent. _She feels a little anxious in there, but perhaps that's just her father._

Trying to calm himself, Erik focused on Charles's impressions of the baby's mind. Another contraction tore his attention away. The nurse, who had been setting up the monitors, came over to check on him.

"My dear," Charles said, gripping Erik's hands again, tightly. “Breathe with me now, that's it.”

"Good, Mr. Xavier, Mr. Lensherr,” the nurse said. “Don't push--”

_Don't say a thing, Erik. I will make you regret it--_

"--and just hold on for a few more minutes. The anesthetist will be here soon."

Though Erik didn't notice at first, the table was vibrating faintly. Charles pushed _calm_ at him until it settled, and the contraction stopped.

"It's unnerving,” Erik said aloud. The nurse, turned away, seemed oblivious to the fact that half the conversation was inaudible.

Being cut apart, studied--he'd read about that kind of thing happening often to mutants who had been told they needed surgery by a human doctor. Maybe--back in Dusseldorf, maybe she had been perfectly healthy, the ultrasound faked. He'd never seen the fetus, he hadn't ever wanted to. Terrified, he laced his fingers tightly between Charles's.

Charles kissed his knuckles. It was strangely comforting.

 _Archaic, but well-meaning_ , he thought, and felt Charles smile.

"Every day, thousands of people get epidurals. I assume it's somewhat safe,” Charles said aloud. Of course, the operating room suddenly tripled in staff, just as they were speaking; Erik had the impression that Charles was talking just to keep them oblivious to his telepathy.

 _I'm here with you,_ Charles sent.

There was a pair of them--anesthesiologists--as well as two more people in scrubs near the table of instruments.

 _Steady_ , Charles thought. Erik realized he'd been about to climb off the table and make a run for it.

The surgeon introduced herself. The anesthesiologists introduced themselves, and told him to lean forward as they set up the equipment behind him, and Erik sensed the row of sharps accumulating behind his back. They wanted to raise the table, to visualize his spine more easily, and Erik baulked.

“You're not separating us,” he growled, summoning scalpels and needles around him, ready for whatever it took to protect his family. Unfamiliar as this metal might be, it would still answer his powers.

Everything froze.

It would be more apt to say he _tried_ to speak, that he tried to use his powers. The words trapped in his throat, the metal in the room spasmed once before becoming inert once more. The doctors noticed, anyway, some of them backing away.

_Erik!_

Fumbling against the intrusion in his mind, Erik thought, _I won't submit to this_ , and Charles frowned slightly, touching his temple.

“I assure you, my husband is quite calm now,” he said. “Go on, if you would.”

 _I am?_ Erik wondered. He was momentarily too bewildered to struggle against Charles's hold, no doubt also Charles's doing.

“He is?” the nurse asked, sounding unconvinced. “Scoot back a little, dear. I'll angle the light. I've seen them do this well enough sitting.”

There was a little grumbling from one of the anesthesiologists--apparently the resident--but Erik was focused on Charles.

_My powers--what did you do?_

_Sorry, love, but I need you to trust me._

_I do,_ Erik sent, fervently. _only--_

 _This is under control, Erik. We're doing this as planned,_ and it was true that a mutant birth plan could include provisions like “the husband not actively in labor will use telepathy to take control of the other's power, should there be a danger to the baby, father, or the entire hospital staff,” but despite his concerns about losing control while in surgery, Erik had hoped it wouldn't come to this. _We need you to relax, for your sake as well as our child's. They were already considering putting you under, Erik._

Erik had moved back. The experienced anesthesiologist was sitting on a stool behind his back, setting up a sterile drape. He shivered. _I didn't mean--_

 _I know, darling. I don't intend to tamper with their minds any further, but just remember,_ he thought, smiling crookedly up at Erik, _You needn't concern yourself, as I intend even_ less _to allow any harm to either of you._

Letting out a reluctant sigh, Erik leaned forward a little more, letting the doctors scrub antiseptic over the small patch of back left exposed in the drape.

“There you go,” Charles murmured as Erik pushed his mind from panic. “I'm right here, love.”

It wasn't as if one could ever forget that Charles was one of the most powerful telepaths in the country--if not the world--but, wrapped up as Erik was in his own instincts and fears, he hadn't thought about the fact that Charles could easily control these humans. Charles may be naive, he may be an idealistic pacifist, but Erik knew he wouldn't hesitate to at least freeze a room full of humans for Erik's safety. Perhaps, Erik thought, he wouldn't hesitate to do more.

As disconcerting as it was, not having being able to control his powers, the moment he felt the hub of the syringe near his spine--

Charles let Erik tighten his grip, hard enough now to leave marks. The anesthesiologist was telling him to stay perfectly still, and Erik tried to grab at the needle, felt it slide easily through his mental grasp. The pain of the needle piercing his back was sharp, and Erik was glad again for Charles's ability to remain so _calm_ during this when his body tried to twist away and kept steady under Charles's control.

“Almost done, love,” Charles said. It didn't feel anywhere near almost done, the pair of doctors still mucking around behind him. When he finally felt the sterile drapes be moved off, he let out a breath. “Took long enough,” he said irritably, and Charles laughed.

 _Behave, I thought I said,_ he thought, as Erik let himself be guided down to lay on his side as they started the epidural.

The sensation of pain medications flowing right into his spine was strange. Slowly, his legs felt increasingly heavy, the discomfort in his lower body becoming more and more distant. Having moved back to sit near Erik's head, Erik had to twist a little to look at him; Charles still had the vaguely distant expression of someone listening in on multiple thoughts. Unnerved as Erik was with the slow disassociation from his legs, he didn't press Charles to ask. It was comforting enough to know Charles had these humans under his control, and he felt Charles's suppressed laugh and a hand through his hair.

He knew enough about the procedure to anticipate that half of it was just getting the epidural in, and most of the rest would be stitching him back up. It wasn't any surprise when they soon got him over on his back--a position he hadn't been in for weeks, considering how Anya would essentially crush his internal organs if he tried--and put up that eerie drape, hiding his gut from him.

 _I don't see where there's any point,_ he thinks. The massive swell of his abdomen all but guarantees he can't see where they'll be cutting, and watching the disembodied heads of the nurses and the surgeons as they prodded him with a pair of forceps asking him if he “felt that” seemed even more troubling--to Erik, at least--than the sight of a little blood. It wasn't that he couldn't feel _anything_ , either, and the dulled sensation of a plastic tube being shoved up his penis without warning was also not exactly appreciated.

Meanwhile, Charles just kept petting him and broadcasting an obnoxious amount of hopefulness and joy. _You'll survive, I'm certain_ , Erik heard. He grumbled, but reached up to squeeze Charles's arm with the hand not hooked up to any tubing.

It all happened quickly from there. With five people gathered around his very naked lower body, Erik hoped it _would_.

Later, his own memories would be so solidly fixed on three moments that Charles would have to remind him how long it took to set Erik's abdomen to rights. He could sense the approach of scalpels, of the cauterizer; the surgeons told him when they were about to start. He couldn't control them, of course, and it wasn't painful. It was merely--strange, and very deftly done, and before he could panic he was feeling intense pressure.

Then there was a feeling, deep inside, like something giving way.

Erik's breath caught. He couldn't even press at Charles's mind to try and glimpse what was going on, to loop his thoughts in with one of the gowned figures he could barely make out for the bright lights. There was a wet noise, the sound of the suction machine, and a great sudden wrenching at his gut.

“All right. Ready to see your baby?”

Erik wanted to curse. Of course he was ready, he had been for months. But it had obviously been a rhetorical question, the drape pulled aside before he could say anything, and Charles's grip was crushing as they saw her.

Seeing a child be pulled out of your abdomen was probably, for most, a little gruesome. Perhaps there was a reason most of these surgeries didn't let the parents see the baby until after it was already fully out. But Charles had insisted on this surgeon for a reason, and Erik couldn't ever imagine it going differently.

From the incision, the lead surgeon lifted her slowly. She didn't cry, and Erik knew if he hadn't seen her through the whole birth--scrunching her face at the lights, flailing against the hands around her--he wouldn't have taken it well.

She was so _small_ , was the first thing he thought, wet and helpless. Transfixed on her tiny body as she was pulled free of the incision and as one of the nurses took her, he barely noticed when Charles grinned and kissed his forehead, when the top of his gown was pulled aside.

“There you are,” the nurse said, and--and god, he never imagined--

They put her right on his chest, still wet and bloody from his body; threw towels over her and dried her roughly as she wriggled close. She coughed wetly, and started her wailing then. Her cries were loud and disapproving, and Erik heard Charles say something about how he didn't think she liked the treatment much. “Good,” someone else was saying, “Good cough, nice set of lungs.” But all Erik could do was laugh, amazed. It was the second thing--after having her pulled from his body--that he'd remember of the surgery, this first moment of truly _seeing_ her.

She had a few tufts of dark hair, an incredibly pinched face, and was a bit purple. Considering she had just come out of one of his organs, she probably wasn't supposed to be all that cute. But in that moment--and every other moment of her life--to Erik, she was perfect. He rubbed her back gently when the nurses let off, and just stared at her, not believing she could be real.

 _She is_ , Charles sent. His shielding was blurred, his surprise and happiness indiscernible from Erik's own. “My god, Erik. Our daughter. Thank you.”

“You don't have to thank me,” Erik replied. He was still laughing, stunned, and he brushed a finger over her tiny clenched hand as one of the nurses adjusted her to give her a shot.

“Anya,” he said, voice rough in his throat, “Welcome.”


	11. Chapter 11

It easily took twenty minutes, getting stitched back up. Between Anya and Charles, Erik hardly noticed a moment of it. Though he could feel the pressure and tug of hands in him again, enough was going on in the operating room that it was fairly impossible to focus on any one thing.

Unless, of course, it was noticing how Anya's nose was shockingly identical to Charles's, or the utter brilliance of his husband's mind.

When they finished the stitches, someone brought the bed back in, and started to clear everyone aside. More activity in a busy room. By then Erik was starting to realize that the operating room was freezing, and was distracted by that as well as Anya.

“We just need to get you over to recovery, now, Mr. Lensherr,” one of the nurses was saying. He didn't want to let Anya go, but he also wanted nothing less than to get under a pile of blankets and sleep for a week. But none of the medical staff took her, and instead someone else said, “Why don't you hold your daughter, Charles, while we help your husband over?”

Even though Erik felt it should have been abundantly obvious that Charles would be holding Anya soon, Charles was still surprised. “Uh, I, ah--”

“Don't break her,” Erik teased, shifting to bring her closer to Charles. “Go on.”

One of the nurses brought over another blanket, and helped a still-stunned Charles adjust her in his arms. And that--that was the last thing Erik would remember with any clarity, later. Anya, bundled and small, lying calmly in Charles's arms; their faces close, and so utterly alike. Even as he was moved over on to the other bed, Erik tried to twist to watch them; Charles letting himself be pushed in the strange chair to take Anya over to be weighed.

She really was quite small, it turned out. Five pounds, three ounces; she was barely two kilos, and later Moira would talk to them about it. _Growth restriction_ and _fetal distress_ and how Moira begrudgingly admitted that it was probably a good thing Erik had decided to throw himself into an early labor. But, for all she was another number in the studies correlating mutant parents with low birth weights, Anya was from all appearances entirely healthy. Erik kept himself attentive long enough to eavesdrop on Charles's interactions with Anya and the nurses, long enough to confirm she would be safe.

Then, exhausted, he let himself notice the dull ache in his body, the endless shivering he seemed to be suffering. They coated him with heated blankets, but it didn't make any difference, the cold penetrating him to the bones. When they offered to let him hold Anya again, he reluctantly told Charles to keep her. The shuddering was intense enough that he feared dropping her.

It felt like shock, and the worried press of Charles's thoughts were loud in his mind. He didn't say anything, but the anesthesiologist must have noticed his tension. It was apparently a common side-effect of the analgesia, this intense cold, and Erik was fine. He'd lost the usual amount of blood, his vitals were steady, and all there was to do was wait until the drugs wore off; by this stage, Erik just hoped he could do most of the waiting while asleep.

The recovery room was warm, small and a bit cozy in the way of a birthing center. Erik let himself be checked over, again, and moved once more into another bed. People kept digging their hand into his abdomen and pushing on his uterus, an uncomfortable procedure he was swiftly realizing he'd just have to get used to; and with every contraction there was a disturbing trickle of fluid from his ass. _Great_ , he thought as he was essentially forced into a pair of mesh panties with a pad, _giving birth is a fucking miracle._

 _Quite_ , Charles replied, smug. He was still cooing over Anya, much to the apparent delight of the nurses who had also noticed the resemblance between the two. Erik reflected as loud as possible on the fact that he was shivering, peeing through a tube, getting his lower body mauled by an assortment of strangers, and bleeding through his ass.

 _Poor dear,_ Charles thought. It was less sympathetic than Erik had hoped for, and he grinned as Charles a wave of _you've been shot at, and as much as I appreciate your discomfort, I know you'll live._

“Now, my love,” he said, when the nurses finally left after topping up the drugs for Erik's pain, “Why don't you get some sleep?”

Looking between Anya and Charles again, Erik thought of putting up a token struggle. But he was finally just beginning to feel warm, his body pleasantly heavy.

“All right,” he said, “But I want it on record that I'm miserable.”

“It's noted,” Charles replied, grinning. _And don't worry_ , he heard, just as he started to nod off. _I've got her._

He slept peaceably, Charles's presence constant.

Until fifteen minutes later, when someone came in to jab at his uterus again.

 

Despite the constant and at-times agonizing interruptions, Erik quickly realized that as long as Anya was in the room and he could tell she was safe, he was complacent with the entire ridiculous hospital. When he'd dozed off for the second time--assured he wouldn't be molested for another few hours--Charles had just put her back in the crib. He woke when she did, fussing quietly. He'd never been a deep sleeper, and immediately he was trying to sit up, trying to get to her.

One of the nurses came in before he could get far.

Charles had gone down to the cafeteria, he was told. He was also reminded that he'd just had surgery, and there was loads of staff available to feed Anya while he slept. Tired as he was, he considered taking them up on the offer. It was only seven hours out of surgery, give or take. He felt bloated and ravenous but hadn't been cleared to eat, he still was hooked up to an IV and a catheter, and there was no way the painkillers could entirely mask the fact that he'd just been sawn in two. But Anya made another fussing sort of sound, deciding the matter for him. 

He needed help getting up in bed, in getting Anya adjusted, in having the formula mixed and in remembering that there was still a magical button he could press to disperse a nice dose of narcotics right into his spine. Grating as it was to accept that much assistance, it was worth any pain or embarrassment to have Anya nestled safe against his chest. She tried to root at him immediately, and he grinned down at her when she bit determinedly at the bottle. “Hungry again?” he asked. 

Alone with her--and the nurse, but around them, Erik's sense of privacy had diminished to nothing--he didn't feel foolish fawning over her. Even the littlest huff of her breath or the way her face scrunched at him as she ate was enough for him to begin speaking complete nonsense.

His only comfort was that Charles seemed similarly affected.

When she finished, he put the bottle aside. By now, the nurse had left them to their own devices, with a reminder to call her when she needed to go back in the crib, given he wasn't exactly cleared to walk, either. Anya yawned at him, waved her tiny hands uncoordinatedly, but just kept squinting up at his face.

“Awake for a while, are you,” Erik mused. Her eyes were nearly squeezed shut, and he glanced up at the lights. “Sorry,” he said. He waved to control the metal in the switch, dimming some of the light, and moved to block the rest above them with his body. Her eyes opened wider, and she stared up at him.

She was amazing. Everything about her, he thought. Idly, he glanced at the band around his wrist: _Lensherr, Erik / 10-2-1976 / M_. He rotated the tiny matching one around her ankle; perhaps a tenth the size of his own. _Lensherr, Anya Xavier / 8-25-2012 / F_. Printed out like that--somehow it made it all feel more real, that this tiny pink creature had actually come from his body. That she was actually Charles's daughter, too; that soon, they'd all get to go home. Her tiny hand reached out and found his, grabbing one finger tightly.

“Ah, you're awake,” Charles said from the door. Erik blinked, surprised he'd been distracted enough not to notice the approach of familiar metal. “My two favorite people.”

“If I were your favorite, you'd bring me dinner,” Erik replied, still watching Anya.

Charles wheeled close, grinning. “But you haven't yet--”

“Don't say it,” Erik said, annoyed. Bad enough the nurses were fixated on his bowels, he didn't need Charles getting in on it. At times, it almost seemed as if Charles was taking some sort of perverse enjoyment out of his entire predicament.

Payback, Erik thought, for a year of being hassled into physical therapy when Charles just wanted to curl up in bed.

“Hmm. Vengeance is so sweet, darling,” Charles said, leaning over to kiss him. Erik snorted. “Feel up to guests just yet?”

Erik considered. He was still a mess, but it wasn't as if anyone visiting wouldn't already know he'd spent the day giving birth. “Long as they aren't eating," he agreed, gruffly.

Charles laughed. “And Anya's ready too, I suppose?”

 _She's already eaten, if that's what you're asking_ , Erik thinks at him, _But you might want to change her, first._

With a joking thought of _lazy_ , Charles went to grab the wipes and one of the towels that had been left for him to set up a makeshift changing table on the bed. Of course, one nurse had protested the routine, saying that it wasn't hygienic and they ought to use the changing table; but it was quickly established that the relative accessibility of the maternity ward was rather lacking. Erik watched, faintly impressed, as Charles deftly unwrapped the blankets around Anya, cleaned her up, changed out the little onesie she was wearing, and swaddled her back up again, nearly before she could figure out she should be fussing. Charles neatly deposited her back in Erik's arms.

“I should hope I'd master the art,” Charles said to Erik's unspoken thoughts. “Now--” he touched his fingers to his temple.

Raven hurtled through the door immediately.

“Trying to keep me way from my niece, I see,” she accused. Charles raised his hands placatingly, saying, “Raven, easy. Come on, Erik was sleeping.”

Erik frowned.

“Why are you dressed like that,” he asked, voice flat.

_Erik, not now._

Fidgeting, Raven frowned back at him, pushing back a strand of pale hair. It was once a familiar argument, but by now--to Charles's horror--Raven spent most days strolling around blue and stark naked, and seeing her old form came as a surprise. “I didn't want to be nude in some hospital lobby,” she explained.

“So change back.”

“Erik,” Charles interrupted. Anya was fussing a little, now. “This is not the time.”

Raven sighed, and her skin flickered. “I'm not going to be happy if she cries,” she warns, and Erik nods. Charles is still biting his lip, obviously concerned by the entire situation.

“It's better than waiting til she's six and leaving me to explain what happened to Aunt Raven,” Erik says. He holds Anya out from his body a little, inviting Raven over.

She's wary, walking slowly over. Anya's still wiggling, trying to kick out of the blankets. Charles is glancing worriedly between the three of them, but as Erik moves to help Raven gently take the baby into her arms, Anya remains quiet.

Smiling down at her niece, Raven's eyes are bright. Maybe Anya has a power, after all--sapping the intelligence others--Erik thinks, as Raven starts cooing nonsense when Anya grips curiously at her blue hand.

 _I'm not going to let anyone hide around her, Charles_ , Erik thinks solemnly. _I'm not having her grow up thinking she needs to hide herself._

 

Physical recovery goes quickly for Erik, as it's always done. He was in decent enough health before and during the pregnancy, and the minute he's cleared to walk around, he's doing it often: strolling around the room and halls as much as energy allows, weaning down the pain medications. He eats ravenously when he's first cleared for it. His body stops bleeding so often, Anya puts on weight, and it's only another day and half before he and Charles are heading home.

The apartment was so different seeming, for her being here; perhaps it's just that he feels like he's been gone for ages. The air seems still, after the hospital; the colors of Anya's room all the more vibrant. For a while, she would be sleeping in the bassinet he'd built in their bedroom, so at least she wouldn't be kept up all night by Charles's paint job just yet.

It felt easy. Erik soon mastered the diaper change as well as Charles; they were both quick with warming formula, with swaddling, with consoling a fussy Anya. The pregnancy hadn't been that difficult, Erik reflected. The birth hadn't even been that traumatic, at least in retrospect.

He and Charles had never been happier. Anya, he would hear from other parents, was an easygoing baby. She didn't cry much, and was obviously attached to him and Charles. Asides from being underweight, she was by all accounts a healthy and perfect human baby; by all accounts, Erik and Charles were ready to take care of her. There was no reason her first months of life shouldn't be just as easy as her birth, or gestation.

And at first, it was simple enough--Erik still had plenty of time off, and Charles had cut down on his appointments as well, and they spent their days happily falling into Anya's routine.

Nearly a week later, just as Charles went back to working full time, the nightmares began.

Nearly as long as he could remember, Erik had been plagued by horrid dreams of some kind. He thought little of it, then, when he first awoke in a cold sweat, Charles leaning over him. He thought little of it the second and third and fourth times, as well, waking from terrifying visions of Anya.

Always Anya: suffocated from crib death, her body blue and cold. Hooked up to heart monitors, the end of some hideous illness. Choking, kidnapped, caught in a fire--it was endless, and if ever he slept well, it was thanks to Charles.

More often, he was completely incapable of sleeping. The exhaustion made him become irritable, suddenly frustrated with the cries that awoke him from his few dream-free naps. And at first, even that was no problem; he wasn't about to hurt her, and he'd worked on less sleep before.

The dreams changed.

Erik couldn't begrudge Charles his work. They had the money, true, but Charles found it intellectually stimulating. His clients needed him, perhaps more than Erik. He said nothing. He watched every one of his own motions, willed his temper down. And he hoped Charles didn't see everything of his nightmares.

One day, he woke to Charles stroking his hair. Exhausted as he was these days, he sat up slowly, body sore and tense.

“What would you like for breakfast, love?” Charles asked. Erik nearly cursed; took a deep breath and centered himself.

“I can get it,” he said, “Later. Go on, you'll be late.”

“I'm cooking anyway. You can get some more rest while I do, I have the time. No work today,” he said. Erik frowned.

“You cancelled,” he accused.

Charles sighed. “Yes. I cancelled.”

“I can do this, Charles,” he said. The words sounded hollow, even to him. “Anya and I, we're fine. Don't skip out on your clients.”

“You're tired, "Charles said, gently. “I'll just be taking a short break, Erik. You know I never took a proper vacation. I miss you and Anya.”

Erik said nothing, and kept his thoughts away from the realization dawning in him: Charles had seen his dreams, and didn't trust him around Anya. He laid back down, and mumbled that he wasn't hungry. That he'd still look for something later, and when he woke again to Anya's cries, he laid still and waited for Charles to wheel back and comfort her.

Pregnancy hadn't been simple. Having surgery to give birth hadn't been ideal. 

Neither of those experiences compared in the slightest to the first few months of Anya's life, when Erik's nights were filled with images of her death because of _him_ , when his days were a stretch of fatigue and regret. He got out of bed only when Charles insisted, usually just to pick at some flavorless meal he'd throw together while Charles fed Anya. Even when he could summon the energy to change her, or warm the formula, the doubt returned.

In his thoughts, Charles would gently encourage him; _hold her_ , or _you're much more adept at burping her than I, you know_. But they seemed to be getting on well enough, alone, and when he'd just awoken from seeing the smoldering remains of the apartment--Erik knew better.

It wasn't until he let Charles drag him along to one of Anya's well-child visits, insisting that Erik was still healing from the birth and needed to see Moira as much as Anya, that he finally let them explain what was happening. Moira had a stack of studies already laid out on the exam room's counter, and Erik nearly laughed.

Another forgotten side-effect, apparently. The hormonal shift, the time it took the androgen-blockers to get out of his system and for his body to return to the pre-pregnancy state--so there was finally data coming out on the rates of postpartum depression in male mutants. _You didn't think to mention this_ , he wanted to say, but he knew it wouldn't have impacted his decision. Even then—even certain he should just take off, leave Charles and Anya where they'd be safer, without him--he wouldn't have changed a thing.

“It's just chemicals, then," he said, instead, and Charles was immediately in his mind. _There's nothing that is just chemicals, Erik. Please, even if it's just this once in your life, accept that you don't need to face everything alone._

He'd never felt alone, with Charles. He said as much then, but Charles was right; he was rarely willing to allow when he needed help.

Moira prescribed more medications. He wasn't willing to take them, but looking at Charles and Anya--he already felt as if there was an insurmountable distance between him and them. And besides, easier pills than having to _talk._

Three weeks later, and he was only just starting to recover; though he was more inclined to place the credit on his return to work than whatever it was Moira had him swallowing.

Naturally, just as he was having enough energy to work and take care of one child--with an abundance of help from Charles, and Raven and Irene, of course--that was when the adoption agency finally decided to call with an emergency case. 

They spoke about it excitedly at first. An infant with scales and what appeared to be gills, left abandoned in a public restroom; the agency wanted a mutant-family placement, preferably close to a mutant community and a decent-sized body of water. It was a chance to make a immediate difference for another mutant; a chance to keep someone out of the system that Erik had already experienced. There was no way they couldn't at least _meet_ with the family currently fostering her.

On the morning before the appointment, Charles's mind felt hesitant, their connection vibrating with the peculiar energy Erik had come to associate with Charles trying to choose his words.

“Are we actually ready for this?”

Erik glanced up from where he was carefully adjusting the sling around his back and a squirming Anya.

“Were we actually ready for her?” he asked, standing up. Anya laughed at the change in elevation, and Erik smoothed her downy hair instinctively. _Were we ever actually ready for each other_ , he wondered, loud enough for Charles to smile.

Walking down the hallway by Charles's side, Erik knew the timing wasn't ideal for this adoption.

Life rarely accounted for proper timing.

By the elevators, he reached down to take Charles's hand.

“And this one's going to be an Xavier," he said. "No arguments. You and Raven have different last names, and this isn't the house of Lensherr.”


End file.
